
Class __TRi5_^ 
Book 'S6S 

COPYRIGHT DEPOSJE 






Books in 
General 











BOOKS OF ESSAYS 

THE MERRY-GO-ROUND 
by Carl Van Vechten 

MUSIC AND BAD MANNERS 
by Carl Van Vechten 

A BOOK OF CALUMNY 
by H. L. Mencken 

A BOOK OF PREFACES 
by H. L. Mencken 

PREJUDICES: First Series 
by H. L. Mencken 

PAVANNES AND DIVISIONS 
by Ezra Pound 

ALFRED A. KNOPF, Publisher 











Books in General 
By Solomon Eagle 




Alfred- A -Knopf 

New York Mcmxix 



COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY 
ALFRED A. KNOPF, Inc. 






OCl -2 1919 

©CI.A536013 



PEINTBD IN THE UNITKD 8TATK8 OT AlUISIOA 



/h^\i 



ARTURO WAUGH 



Preface 

THESE papers are selections from a series 
contributed weekly, without intermission, 
to the New Statesman since April ig 1 2' I 
do not feel that the responsibility for reprinting 
them rests on my shoulders; I trust that where it 
does rest it will rest lightly. I shall have done all 
I hope to do if I have produced the sort of book 
that one reads in, without tedium, for ten minutes 
before one goes to sleep. 

The pseudonym " Solomon Eagle," I may ex- 
plain, is not intended to posit any claim to unusual 
wisdom or abnormally keen sight. The original 
bearer of the name was a poor maniac who, during 
the Great Plague of London, used to run naked 
through the street, with a pan of coals of fire on his 
head, crying " Repent, repent." 

S. E. 



Contents 

Who's Who, 13 

Political Songs, 19 

An Oriental on Albert the Good, 25 

Epigrams, 31 

An Eminent Baconian, 37 

The Beauties of Badness, 42 

More Badness, 54 

A Mystery Solved, 58 

Carrying the Alliance too far, 60 

May 1914, 63 

May 1914: The Leipzig Exhibition, 69 

The Mantle of Sir Edwin, 75 

" The Cattle of the Boyne," 81 

August 19 14, 83 

Mrs. Barclay sees it through, 88 

A Topic of Standing Interest, 94 

Was Cromwell an Alligator?, 99 

The Depressed Philanthropist, 105 

A Polyphloisboisterous Critic, 1 1 1 

"Another Century, and then . . .," 115 

Herriclc, 121 

The Muse in Liquor, 127 

£5 Misspent, 133 

Shakespeare's Women and Mr. George Moore, 

137 
Moving a Library, 143 



Contents 

Table-Talk and Jest Books, 146 

Stephen Phillips, 150 

Gray and Horace Walpole, 155 

A Horrible Bookseller, 161 

The Troubles of a Catholic, 166 

The Bible as Raw Material, 168 

How to avoid Bad English, 172 

Woodland Creatures, 177 

Other People's Books, 183 

Peacock, 187 

Wordsworth's Personal Dullness, 189 

Henry James's Obscurity, 195 

The " Ring " in the Bookselling Trade, 201 

Music-Hall Songs, 207 

More Music-Hall Songs, 213 

Utopias, 218 

Charles II in English Verse, 224 

The Most Durable Books, 229 

The Worst Style in the World, 234 

The Reconstruction of Orthography, 240 

Mr. James Joyce, 245 

Tennessee, 251 

Sir William Watson and Mr. Lloyd George, 254 

Stranded, 259 

Mr. Ralph Hodgson, 264 

Double Misprints, 268 

The History of Earl Pumbles, 270 

On Destroying Books, 276 



Who's Who 

WORKS of reference are extremely useful; 
but they resemble Virgil's Hell in that 
they are easy things to get into and very 
difficult to escape from. Take the Encyclopaedia. 
I imagine that my experience with it is universal. 
I have only to dip my toe into this tempting morass 
and down I am sucked, limbs, trunk and all, to re- 
main embedded until sleep or a visitor comes to haul 
me out. A man will read things in the Encyclo- 
paedia that he would never dream of looking at else- 
where — things in which normally he does not take 
the faintest interest. One may take up a volume 
after lunch in order to discover the parentage of 
Thomas Nashe; but one does not put it down when 
one has satisfied one's curiosity. One turns over a 
few pages and becomes absorbed in the career of 
Napoleon. Thence one drifts to the article on 
Napier, which sends one to that on Logarithms in 
another volume; and when night closes in and (as 
we used to construe it) sleep brings rest to weary 
mortals, one still sits in one's chair, bending heavy- 
eyed over the book, with a dozen pressing duties left 
undone and the last post missed. By that time one 
has reached, perhaps, the abnormally complex dia- 
grams which illustrate the article on Metaphysico- 

13 



Books in General 

theologico-cosmolo-nigology — of which science, the 
reader will remember, Voltaire was the father and 
Herr Doktor Pangloss the first professor. 

Who's Who takes me in the same way. Ordi- 
narily I have no particular thirst for it. I should 
not dream of carrying it about in my waistcoat 
pocket for perusal on the Underground Railway. 
But once I have allowed myself to open it, I am a 
slave to it for hours. This has just happened to 
me with the new volume, upon which I have wasted 
a valuable afternoon. I began by looking up a 
man's address; I then read the compressed life- 
story of the gentleman next above him (a major- 
general), wondering, somewhat idly, whether they 
read of each other's performances and whether 
either of them resented the possession by the other 
of a similar, and unusual, surname. Then I was in 
the thick of it. There was nothing especially ex- 
citing about most of the information that met my 
eye. Generally speaking, the biographies were of 
people of whom I had never previously heard, and 
whose doubtlessly reputable achievements had been 
recorded in spheres as unfamiliar to me as the dark 
side of the moon. What can it mean to me that 
Mr. J. Fitztimmins Gubb worked for five years 
under Schmitt at Magdeburg and is now demon- 
strator in Comparative Obstetrics at the Robson In- 
stitute? Or that the Bishop of the Cocos Islands 
has been five times married and was educated at 
14 



Who's Who 

King Edward VI Grammar School, Chipping Ches- 
ter, and Pembroke College, Oxford? Yet I read of 
some six or seven hundred such, and found it as 
difficult to refrain from " Just one more " as would 
a wealthy dipsomaniac just parting from an old 
friend in a public-house at five minutes before clos- 
ing time. I cannot easily account for the attraction. 
Something, I suppose, may be put down to the fact 
that character comes out in a man's account, however 
bald, of himself; and that the Who's Who auto- 
biographies, in spite of their compression, exhibit 
many and diverse interesting traits of character. 
But mainly, I think, it must be that we most of us 
have collector's mania in some form or another, 
and that one cannot resist the temptation of collect- 
ing facts even when they are so irrelevant and of 
so little importance to one that they slip through 
one's fingers as soon as one has gathered them. 
For I am sure that I do not know now whether I 
have got the number of the Bishop's wives right, or 
the sites of his education, or even the name of his 
diocese. 

I suppose that no one ever tells an untruth in 
Who's Who. There is not much scope for it, 
though it is conceivable that there may have been 
exaggerations of the truth. The compilers are ex- 
tremely capable; and the contributors seem to be 
as uniform in their veracity as they are various in 
their loquacity. Only in rare circumstances could 

15 



Books in General 

any one hope to impose on Who's Who without very 
rapid detection. An opportunity of that nature did 
once occur to me. There is a compilation called the 
American Who's Who, published (if I remember 
correctly) in Chicago. By some curious accident, 
which I have never been able to explain, its con- 
ductors got hold of my name — I don't mean 
" Eagle," but the other. By some accident more 
curious still they got the impression that I was an 
American settled in London; and with admirable 
enterprise they sent me, for two or three years in 
succession, yellow forms on which I was requested 
to inscribe my age, antecedents, and accomplish- 
ments. Each year I was dazzled by the idea of a 
joke which, I felt, would immensely amuse me, and 
which could (so the Devil argued) hurt nobody. 
On each occasion I filled the form exhaustively. 
I put down my name and address correctly; but be- 
yond that not a word of truth did I tell. I in- 
vented for myself a career, a career not imposing 
enough to arouse suspicions, but far more pictur- 
esque than my actual career has been. I described 

my parents as being Homer E. and Anna P. 

, of St. Louis, Mo. I copied out of an Amer- 
ican minor poet's autobiographical preface a list of 
academies at which I had been educated; and then 
I launched out. 

I had, I stated, left America for Europe at the 
age of nineteen. I had written (I was cunning 
i6 



Who's Who 

enough to put down the names of one or two of 
my actual works) such and such books, including 
a Manual (for Schools) on Political Economy and 
a small brochure on Polycarp. I had travelled over 
four continents; my recreations were " all forms of 
sport, especially big-game hunting"; I had gone 
through the Balkan War as a volunteer with the 
Greek Army; and I possessed several decorations, 
including the Blue Boar of Rumania, the St. Miguel 
and All Angels of Portugal, and the fourth class of 
the Turkish Medjidie. Notice the fourth class; no 
common liar would have thought of so convinc- 
ingly modest a claim as that. Each year, as I say, 
I lived laborious days in the delineation of an imag- 
inary pedigree and a supposititious career. Then 
I broke down. There was no risk of punishment 
attached, and, I take it, small risk of discovery. 
But my softer self began telling me that it was a 
scandalous thing to hoax foreigners; that the trick 
was unworthy of an Englishman, or, indeed, an 
adult of any nationality, down to the most back- 
ward of Nicobar Islanders; and that the only fitting 
punishment for a person addicted to such practices 
would be to have pins put upon his chair by his chil- 
dren or his back chalked by infants in the street. I 
weakened and broke; sentiment overcame reason; 
my heart gained the victory over my head. And 
each year, with reluctant deliberation, I tore up the 
well-filled sheet and destroyed again my other self, 
my American self, the romantic self who had done 

17 



Books in General 

the things I had never done, who had stalked the 
bear in the snowy fastnesses of the Caucasus and won 
the gratitude of exotic potentates. The forms have 
stopped coming now; but the memory of my vision 
still burns with a melancholy yet tender brightness; 

and those mythical progenitors, Homer E. and 

Anna P. , are to me all that his Dream Children 

were to Charles Lamb. 



Political Songs 



IF one goes up a mountain and surveys all the 
kingdoms of the world one sees a good many 
horrible things. Few of them are worse, in 
their way, than the modern political song. There 
have been bad political songs in all ages. Caesar's 
soldiers used to sing some which were not merely 
uninspiring but irrelevant, and Lilli Burlero (or 
LilUbulero) itself was no great shakes as a poem 
although its tune had a swing. But there have 
never been any to equal in badness the kind of songs 
that has been generated by the British party system. 
The only modern politicians who ever manage to 
generate a good song are the Socialists. Socialist 
song-books, in spite of their plenitude of hack phrases 
about chains and freedom's dawn, always have a 
good deal of tolerable poetry in them. WilHam 
Morris's political songs are excellent, and some 
of the modern foreign Socialist songs are really 
worthy expressions of the movement. When their 
words are not good their tunes are : witness the 
Internationale and that stirring Italian labour song 
that is now, I believe, prohibited by King Victor's 
Government. But the kind of songs that our good 
Liberals and Conservatives sing at their meetings 
are gruesome. 

19 



Books in General 

I hold In my hand — as the saying goes — the 
Liberal Song Sheet now being used at big party 
meetings. One or two of the more facetious ditties 
show some ingenuity, and there is a certain go about 
the first Hne of " Stamp, stamp, stamp upon Pro- 
tection " ; but for the rest the only song the writer 
of which would not get a birching in any properly 
constituted society is Ebenezer Elliott's God Save 
the People, which is generations old. " Let who 
will make a nation's laws as long as I make its 
songs," said some writer. One might add: " Let 
who will make a nation's songs as long as they are 
not done by the people who make its laws." Cau- 
cus-provided laws may be all right, but caucus-pro- 
vided songs, written by party agents and under- 
secretaries, are not successful. 

The chief characteristic of the Liberal songs, apart 
from their metrical and linguistic peculiarities, is 
their insistence upon incongruous military image. 
Imagine Mr. Asquith donning bright armour and 
taking part in the incidents depicted in these verses 
— to the tune of Who will o'er the Downs? 

Our leaders, tried and trusted men, 

Still love the ancient faith. 
To Freedom and to Conscience true 

In danger and in death. 
And they have donned their armour bright. 

Their courage all aglow, 
20 



Political Songs 

To lead the toilers of the land 
Against the Tory foe. 

'For years we've suffered pain and loss, 

By privilege oppressed; 
Our birthright has been filched from us 

And left us sore distressed. 
But now our leaders — trusted, tried — 

Are keen to strike a blow. 
And wrest our stolen acres from 

The proud, disdainful foe. 

It Is not my business to discuss the justness of 
the judgments here implied, but what on earth is 
the point of suggesting that Mr. Asquith, Mr. 
George, Mr. Lulu Harcourt, Lord Haldane, and 
so on, are true " in danger and in death "? They 
may have come unscathed through the fire of Suffra- 
gette dog-whips, but nobody calls them to die for 
disestablishment. There is here an utter lack of 
reality, a lack that must prevent these songs from 
moving anybody to action, as good songs should do. 
They are as conventionally false as the cheapest kind 
of leading article. 

Here are some more extracts from the same 
source : 

We defend the right we won in ages past; 

We demand the measures by the Commons passed, 

Let no Lords presume to wreck the work at last, 

21 



Books in General 

For we go marching on. 
Freedom for our trade and nation 
From all insolent vexation. 
For democracy' s salvation 

We all go marching on. 

Peers and Tories may to wreck the work unite, 
Britain' s sons for Britain's freedom still shall fight; 
None shall hinder us till triumph is in sight, 
As we go marching on. 

Then up to the sky with your Hip-hip-H ooray ! 
For the unbeaten leader, who leads us to-day, 
For AsQUlTH — to-day, after long, weary years. 
Our victorious Captain o' er Tories and Peers. 
Then cheer with a will for the great deed is done; 
Attacking the Veto, we've fought and we've won; 
Henceforward these islands of ours are to he 
Not the Land of the Peers hut the Land of the Free. 

Long, long in shameful slavery 
The emerald isle hath lain. 
The victim of past knavery. 

And Unionist disdain. 
But Freedom's day is coming — 
See how the foemen flee! 
Home Rule is just 
And come it must 
To set old Ireland free! 



22 



Political Songs 

One blow will end the matter! 
Strike, strike it with a will! 
The enemy we'll scatter 

And quickly pass our Bill. 

Our leaders are determined, 

True followers are we, 

Our arms are strong 

To right the wrong 

And set old Ireland free. 

A curious thing Is that almost universally In these 
songs the virtues and actions of the party leaders 
get almost as much attention as the political ques- 
tions at Issue. This Is the mark of the caucus. 

It Is a very difficult thing to write a good propo- 
gandlst song at all. A first-rate tune will often 
cover up the most prosaic words, but generally speak- 
ing political songs split on the rock of the specific. 
It Is the greatest mistake to expect to stir people 
with verses dealing with a particular Bill. The 
spirit of freedom, the spirit of revolt, the passion 
of love, or the passion of hate, may make good 
songs, but It is a hopeless task to try to make poetry 
out of the taxation of land values or an Import duty 
on corn. A good Socialist song may deal with 
brotherhood or service, but It cannot deal with " the 
nationalization of the means of production, distribu- 
tion, or exchange." One should avoid the kind of 
concrete details that produce a sense of anti-climax, 

23 



Books in General 

and the kind of personalities that sound false. The 
spirit of Liberty may appropriately be depicted in 
a helmet, but it is silly to conjure up a picture of 
Mr. Asquith with a suit of armour over his frock- 
coat. Even the fact that a thing is glaringly true 
does not necessarily make it suitable for metrical 
statement. It is true that there is an insufficient 
supply of sanatoria and that the thought profoundly 
moves many people. But a song emphasizing the 
fact must be a failure. Modern political song- 
writers fail ( I ) because they are usually people who 
cannot write verse at all, (2) because they try to 
make their songs like extra-rhetorical speeches or 
articles. Probably the next Liberal song will deal 
with the ravages of pheasants. 



24 



An Oriental on Albert the 
Good 

THE award of the Nobel Prize to Mr. Ra- 
blndranath Tagore is generally approved. 
I do not entirely agree with those who think 
that Mr. Tagore's poems are masterpieces in Eng- 
lish; for I find his English poetical prose monoton- 
ous and without rhythmical beauty, although, in a 
sense, immaculate. But those who know the Indian 
originals say that they are really great, and that 
they have got a hold on the general population un- 
precedented for centuries past. 

I have just acquired a book by an Indian poet 
who was not so wise in his choice of subjects as is 
Mr. Tagore. The book is an English version 
(made in 1864 by the tutor of Sir J. Jeejeebhoy's 
sons, and published by the Bombay Education So- 
ciety) of an Epic on the Prince Consort by the 
Parsee poet " Munsookh." The poem is enliven- 
ing if not inspiring. 

It opens with the usual Oriental invocation to 
Heaven, ending " With that remembrance alone will 
I fill the cup of my heart and sing new and enter- 
taining stories." It then plunges straight in medias 
res with a first canto, " On the birth of Prince Al- 

25 



Books in General 

bert, his education and arrival at mature years; and 
his wish to marry Victoria." 

" There is a country of the world called Germany, 
the eminence of which is known everywhere. In 
its interior is a large district called the Dukedom 
of Gotha, about thirty-seven miles in area, and con- 
taining about one hundred and fifty thousand in- 
habitants. The air of this district is pleasant, dry, 
and cool; and the water refreshing and pure. The 
land Is good and very fertile, and every article of 
food and clothing is cheap there. In its neighbour- 
hood is the city of Coburg, where the richest bless- 
ings of Providence display themselves, near which 
flows the river Itz, and where Is a magnificent ducal 
castle, having the appropriate name of Roslna, with 
a garden entirely surrounding it. Here the birth 
of Albert took place." 

Prince Albert grew up wise and studious, and 
at last his preceptor said to him: "My accom- 
plished pupil, this Is the one hope of my soul, that 
thou make a hearty effort to be united to the worthy 
heiress of the Kingdom of England, and if thou 
do this, thou wilt not be disappointed. . . . Put in 
action therefore the effective dagger of contrivance; 
engraft speedily the plant of love . . . lose not 
thy time, for if thou do thou wilt be considered a 
fool." 

Queen Victoria's portrait was sent to Albert, the 
26 



An Oriental on Albert the Good 

bearer telling him that he was searching the world 
for a worthy, loving, and religious prince. " Thou 
hast administered the medicine for my secret pain," 
was the reply, and the Prince wrote a letter acknowl- 
edging the present. " When I would write thee a 
letter," he said, " the water of my eyes flows from 
my pen instead of the black ink. ... In my feeling 
of love for thee I am mad : I am a moth flying around 
a candle. . . . Though I swim always in a flood 
of tears, my body is burning to a cinder." When 
Victoria's mother heard about this she was glad, 
but said that " the hearts of the English people are 
intoxicated with haughtiness; they despise a stranger 
and a foreigner . . . nor will they consider it hon- 
ourable that thou should be united in love to a child 
of Germany." Various letters passed, but Albert's 
father was astonished at his rashness. " Foolish 
boy, heretofore engrossed in eating, drinking, and 
learning. Where didst thou get this information 
and these notions? ... A nation proud and 
haughty like the English will think thee thoroughly 
mad." But letters from England convinced the 
Duke; he admonished his son as to his future be- 
haviour; and the party sailed for the port of London, 
where " Victoria immediately went upon the ter- 
race." The lovers met and sang, and the Prince re- 
turned home to complete his studies. " A little time 
after this occurrence the Queen again remembered 
Albert; she caused a letter, official, and according to 
rule, to be written to his father." 

27 



Books in General 

** Albert's father prepared himself at once, taking 
necessary provisions, furniture, and money. Hav- 
ing sat in a boat Prince Albert went forward accom- 
panied by his family. The gallant vessel floated 
down the stream, and did not leave her track on the 
way. From a distance she appeared like an alli- 
gator, or like the moon of the second day saihng 
through the heavens, or like a tree growing in the 
midst of deep waters, casting its shadows as it moved 
in a hundred directions; or she was like a horse leap- 
ing without feet, and bound only to the surface of the 
water, so swift and lofty of mien that the sun from 
afar uttered a shout of approbation. As a lover 
weeps on account of separation from his beloved, so 
the ship beating her breast, filled her skirts with 
water. She sometimes appeared from her motion 
tired and weary, and the bubbles about her seemed 
like blisters on the feet. In body she was a strong 
negress, but in speed lively; in her womb were hun- 
dreds of children, yet did she never bear." 

" Albert thought the waves were like an infuri- 
ated elephant," but he arrived safely, and the mar- 
riage was celebrated amid general rejoicings. 

" The voice of triumph arose from every side with 
guns and bells and bands of music; in every house, 
too, arose the heart-charming sounds of cornets, 
flutes, harps, pianos, and singing of various sorts; 
cannons boomed from every fort — one making a 
28 



An Oriental on Albert the Good 

whirring noise, another a noise like thunder. . . . 
So pure became the waters of the Thames that one 
could see in them the image even of the soul of his 
body. It was not a river, but as it were a flower 
garden; and the bodies of the fishes glittered like 
rose-leaves. Everywhere were clusters of variously 
decked boats; the vessels were as shaking mountains, 
which made graceful motions like peacocks coquet- 
ting in the garden of Paradise." 

A great banquet followed, and when " the reign 
of wine " was finished the music began. " Trom- 
bones sounded so impressively that letters were im- 
printed upon the face of the air." Then came the 
dancing. " What shall I say of the Mendozas and 
Polkas? for the philosophic and the pious lost their 
peace of mind through them. . . . The Polka was 
kept up with such zest and excitement that there was 
a stir among the angels of heaven. ... In short, 
the ball was gracefulness itself which made the stars 
bite their own bodies with jealousy." The dead rose 
up from the ground enamoured of the dancing, and 
the lamps put their hands over their eyes. The 
festivities over the royal pair retired and sang to 
each other. 

Next year a princess was born, and all England 
was merry. Other children followed, and for 
twenty years the royal pair lived in happiness. In 
1843 t^c Queen and the Prince revisited his native 

29 



Books in General 

country in a ship furious as a leopard, that broke 
through hundreds of whales. Home awoke tender 
thoughts in the Prince. " Collecting himself he 
sang " a chant comparing himself to Joseph, and his 
bride to Zuleika — which indicates a somewhat dif- 
ferent view of the Potiphar's wife episode from that 
prevalent in Occidental circles. The rest of the 
work is mainly taken up with the Great Exhibition, 
the Prince's death, and numerous maxims for the use 
of his son, such as: 

" King must keep entirely aloof from several hurt- 
ful things as . . . chess. 

" A king's country is like a beautiful woman, and 
the merchants of that country are, as it were, the 
precious jewels and ornaments of that woman; and 
the more these jewels and ornaments are, the more 
heart-charming and beautiful she looks." 

This last aphorism is disputable. 



30 



Epigrams 



ANY one who reads Mr. R. N. Lennard's 
charming little anthology of English epi- 
grams in the Oxford Garlands Series will 
regret that the practice of writing poetical epigrams 
has died out. Until the Victorian age almost all 
professional writers, as well as many amateurs, tried 
their hands at epigram. If you had anything espe- 
cially offensive to say about any one — and especially 
about politicians, doctors, and ladies unduly addicted 
to cosmetics — it was the natural thing to put it 
into a couplet or a quatrain. Ministers and Privy 
Councillors used to compose epigrams about each 
other; but who can imagine Sir Henry Dalziel writ- 
ing witty quatrains about Sir Alfred Mond, or vice 
versa} Why the habit has died out I don't profess 
to say. There may be some significance in the fact 
that the great age of epigrams was the eighteenth 
century — the prose age par excellence. There is 
probably more in the decay of knowledge of Greek 
and Latin. When almost every educated man was 
familiar with the Greek Anthology and the works 
of Martial — whence all kinds of epigrams, elegiac, 
amatory, and satirical, descend — it was perhaps 
natural that the temptation to continue the good 
work should be generally felt. It may even be that 

31 



Books in General 

a form so small is incapable of infinite variety and 
grows exhausted. Johnson wrote a ludicrous bur- 
lesque epigram — 

// the matt who turnips cries 
Cry not when his father dies, 
'Tis a proof that he had rather 
Have a turnip than his father. 

— and there is undoubtedly sound criticism in it. 
After a certain time the making of epigrams may 
proceed almost on a formula. At all events, the 
decline of the epigram is obvious. The well-meant 
effusions which the late Sir Wilfrid Lawson used 
to waft across the benches of the House of Commons 
were scarcely equal to the old level of our political 
quips; it is very rarely that a tolerable metrical epi- 
gram appears in the Press; and the poets have 
almost all abandoned the habit of attempting to get 
their thoughts into so small a compass. The cus- 
tom of composing epigrams for private albums is 
virtually extinct. Every schoolgirl writes in every 
other schoolgirl's album that there is nothing Origi- 
nal in her excepting Original Sin; and even that 
not very splendid mot was constructed by Thomas 
Campbell nearly a hundred years ago. The rest 
is silence. 

The greater number of our epigrams are satiri- 
cal, and Mr. Lennard's selection is mainly composed 
of these verses with stings in their tails. One of 
32 



Epigrams 

the most taking of these is A. Evans's on a Fat 
Man: 

When Tadlow walks the streets, the paviours cry 
" God bless you, sir! " and lay their rammers by. 

But that, perhaps, is not really stinging; if Mr. 
Tadlow was good-tempered, he must have liked it 
himself. Good couplets like these are few, but Cole- 
ridge's on the Swan-Song is one : 

Swans sing before they die — 'twere no had thing 
Should certain persons die before they sing. 

The most brutal epigrams we have are Byron's on 
Castlereagh's suicide, after that statesman had cut 
his throat. These are not very good, but Mr. Len- 
nard gives them; and, in fact, almost every famous 
epigram in the language. He classifies them under 
headings: " Political," " Professional and Trading," 
" Amatory," and so on. Of the Literary epigrams 
one of the best is Bishop Stubbs's on two of his nine- 
teenth-century contemporaries: 

Fronde informs the Scottish youth 
That parsons do not care for truth. 
The Reverend Canon Kingsley cries 
History is a pack of lies. '■ 



What cause for judgments so malign? 
A brief reflection solves the mystery — 



33 



Books in General 

Fronde believes Kingsley a divine, 

And Kingsley goes to Froude for history. 

Lord Erskine's on Scott's Waterloo Poem is good: 

On Waterloo' s ensanguined plain 
Lie tens of thousands of the slain, 
But none, by sabre or by shot, 
Fell half so flat as Walter Scott. 

Theodore Hook's epigram suggesting that it would 
be impossible to find a reader who would pay for 
the binding of Prometheus Unbound now falls as 
flat as Scott, owing to the utter falsification of the 
prophecy. 

Mr. Lennard gives a fair number of epitaphs, 
including Evans's well-known one on Vanbrugh and 
Gay's even better-known one on himself. But I 
don't think we have in English an epitaph so de- 
lightful as that written for his own tomb by the 
obscene French poet Piron: 

Ci-git Piron 

Qui ne fut rien. 
Pas meme 

Academicien. 

Landor's " I strove with none, for none was worth 
my strife," however, could not be surpassed by any 
serious epitaph. From Landor Mr. Lennard has 
naturally had to draw freely for his more serious 

34 



Epigrams 

sections. Landor came nearer than any English 
writers to rivalling the feats of the best Greek epi- 
grammatists. Many people would say that his 
Dirce is the most beautiful epigram in the language. 

Mr. Lennard's selection is, as I have said, a very 
good one. The only old one I miss is Richard 
Bentley's on German scholarship : 

The Germans in Greek 
Are sadly to seek; 
Not one in five score, 
But ninety-nine more. 
All, all except Hermann — 
And Hermann's a German. 

The omission is the stranger in that Landor's greatly 
inferior epigram on Germans is included. About 
the longest poem admitted is Clough's revised ver- 
sion of the Ten Commandments: it is flat in places, 
but contains one famous couplet. Only when he 
comes to the moderns might Mr. Lennard have cast 
his net wider. Browning, who wrote some neat 
versicles, is unrepresented; and so is Mr. Watson, 
who, in his earlier days, wrote epigrams, some of 
which, if not masterpieces, were as good as some 
of Mr. Lennard's old ones. And it would have 
been worth while to collect a few of the miscellan- 
eous modern ones that float about. There are 
Limericks — and some Limericks will satisfy the 
narrowest definition of an epigram — which would 

35 



Books in General 

be worth preserving; and then there are odd frag- 
ments like the effort alleged to have been written 
on the blackboard by a Cheltenham schoolgirl: 

Miss Buss and Miss Beale 
Cupid's darts do not feel. 
How different from us 
Miss Beale and Miss Buss. 

Tolerable modern epigrams are so few that it would 
be worth while saving all there are. Unfortunately 
the pleasantest personal ones that one hears priv- 
ately, though they would have been printed in a 
franker day, must mostly remain unprinted in an 
age when direct satire is considered ungentlemanly, 
and the law of libel is so easily invoked. I remem- 
ber Mr. 's epigram on Lady and Mr. 

's on Sir . Mr. Lennard cannot be 

expected to publish these. 



36 



An Eminent Baconian 

AVERY curious chapter in the history of the 
Bacon-Shakespeare controversy closes with 
the death of Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence. 
Amid all the strange multitude of retired judges, 
lawyers, astrologers, and American ladies who have 
championed the cause of Lord Verulam there has 
been no figure more singular than that of this afflu- 
ent old ex-M.P., who, after a lifetime spent in busi- 
ness, platform speaking, and the study of modern 
mechanical improvements, suddenly plunged into the 
fight with unprecedented enthusiasm and methods of 
argument never equalled in their singularity. Set- 
ting out with the conviction that Shakespeare could 
not possibly have written the plays, and that Bacon 
was the only man who could have, Sir Edwin became 
so obsessed with the subject that he found proofs 
of his contention everywhere, and gradually came 
to the conclusion that Bacon wrote almost all the 
Elizabethan and Jacobean literature that is worth 
reading. We have heard of the devout mystic who 
sees " every common bush afire with God": to Sir 
Edwin Durning-Lawrence every common bush was 
afire with Bacon. His outlook being of this char- 
acter, it is scarcely to be wondered at that his meth- 

37 



Books in General 

ods of reasoning and of research were most sur- 
prising. 

Most people who read his pamphlet, The Shakes- 
peare Myth, must have been astounded by the 
naivete of some of the " proofs " there contained. 
The fact that Bacon was called Bacon — a name 
so easily interchangeable with pig, hog, and rasher 
— was a great help; for where the application of 
ciphers did not obtain one word it might obtain 
another. Bacon, according to Sir Edwin, must have 
been at least as preoccupied with ensuring his identi- 
fication by posterity as with the writing of good 
verse, for he would take great pains to work in such 
a word as " hang-hog," or to make three consecu- 
tive lines begin with words — such as Pompey, In, 
and Got — out of the initials of which could be 
constructed the appellation " pig." Everything was 
pork that came to Sir Edwin's net, and he would by 
tortuous ratiocination get evidence from the most 
seemingly innocent contemporary English and for-^ 
eign engravings. For there was a secret brother- 
hood at work carrying on the Baconian tradition, 
and the artist who gave the portrait of Shakespeare 
two left sleeves (the confirmation of this was, I 
think, obtained from the editor of the Tailor ^ 
Cutter) had a subtle and profound intention. Sir 
Edwin collected a very large library in connexion 
with his work, and the study of it was his passion; 
but, save industry, he had none of the qualifications 
for his task. 
38 



An Eminent Baconian 

I myself obtained in a strange way an amusing 
insight into his looseness of procedure. He had 
been writing letters maintaining his thesis in a con- 
temporary weekly. Wondering whether he could 
be hoaxed, I sent to the paper a letter over what 
might have seemed, to a man with any real detective 
faculty, the suspicious signature " P. O. R. Ker." 
In this letter I called Sir Edwin's attention to a 
quotation (which I had myself invented and written 
in Elizabethanese) which I ascribed to one of the 
best-known works of Greene. My " quotation " (I 
forget its wording, but it contained phrases about 
" Shakescene " and "the semblance of a hogg") 
made it perfectly clear that Shakespeare was merely 
Bacon's dummy. Any man with the slighest quali- 
fications for his work would have looked up Greene 
for reference — and would not have found it. Not 
so Sir Edwin. He wrote in at once (the editor, 
in order to spare his feelings, did not print the com- 
munication) to say that the fact that Mr. Ker's im- 
portant and convincing reference had been ignored 
by the Shakespeareans showed their utter incom- 
petence. 

But the most striking thing about him was his 
detestation of Shakespeare. There are people who 
hate Napoleon; there are people who object to Tor- 
quemada; there are even people who feel a 
pronounced distaste for Nero. But never has any 
one loathed and despised a dead man as the really 

39 



Books in General 

mild and amiable Sir Edwin despised and loathed 
Shakespeare. No epithets were, he felt, too op- 
probrious for this rascal, who for three hundred 
years had cheated another man out of his due fame. 
He denied Shakespeare any virtue at all; he pointed 
out that there existed no proof that Shakespeare 
could even read; and he habitually referred to him 
as the " drunken, illiterate clown of Stratford," 
" the sordid money-lender of Stratford," and " the 
mean, drunken, ignorant, and absolutely unlettered 
rustic of Stratford." So strong, indeed, were his 
feelings that when the Times says that " One cannot 
but feel that he was happy in not living to see the 
celebrations which the British Academy and other 
friends of literature are to hold in 191 6, the 
third centenary of Shakespeare's — not Bacon's 
— death," it is not making a weak and untimely jest, 
but stating the sober truth. 

Who will now take on Sir Edwin's mantle as the 
most conspicuous Baconian? Mr. George Green- 
wood is hors concours because, though an anti- 
Shakespearean, he has doubts about Bacon; and we 
have heard nothing lately about that romantic Amer- 
ican doctor who a year or two ago began digging 
for evidence in the bed of the sylvan Wye. That 
another ardent combatant will soon appear is pretty 
certain; In fact, there will probably be a continual 
succession of such for all time unless — which is 
unlikely — somebody discovers documentary proofs 
40 



An Eminent Baconian 

of Shakespeare's authorship so irrefutable that no 
one could dream of challenging them. For the ex- 
amination of a mystery — if you can persuade your- 
self that there is a mystery — is always fascinating, 
and the search for and application of ciphers and 
hidden meanings produces such entertaining results 
that it would be almost worth while becoming a 
Baconian for the fun of it. Almost, but not quite. 



41 



The Beauties of Badness 

THE collector of amusingly bad poetry has 
never had such splendid opportunities as 
to-day. The world is all before him where 
to choose. Modern cheap production has made it 
easy for any one who can raise £20 to get a volume 
of poems printed; and of recent years the field has 
been greatly enriched by the growing body of verse- 
writers in America and the Colonies. There have 
always, of course, been poets who have given un- 
intentional rather than intentional pleasure. I have 
before me a volume published (at Cambridge) in 
1825, entitled Original Poems in the Moral, Heroic, 
Pathetic and other Styles, by a Traveller, which 
contains poems in the following style — amongst 
others: 

INGRATITUDE 

My Muse, who oft recites on Love, 

Or Heavenly Beatitude, 
Her strains more melancholy move 

Devoted to Ingratitude. 

With thee. Dark Demon — what can charm? 
Nor manners polish' d — chaste, or rude; 

42 



The Beauties of Badness 

Nor Friendship' s hand — nor Safety's arm 
So vile art thou — Ingratitude ! 

Tho' dear a Female's face, or form; 

Tho' elegant her attitude; 
We fly, as from the winged storm — 

// she pours forth Ingratitude. 

But it is seldom that the collector comes across one 
of these delightful relics from an older day. The 
greater part of any collection must be formed of 
books published within the last forty years. Our 
age may be — indeed, it is — deficient in some re- 
spects, but in the production of unintentionally amus- 
ing writers no age, not even the Renaissance or the 
great ages of Greece and Rome, can vie with it. 

It might be possible for a man with the industry 
of a Herbert Spencer exhaustively to classify the 
writers of whom I am speaking, and to tabulate the 
qualities which give to their works their peculiar 
virtues — incongruity of image, unfortunate use of 
colloquialisms, hopeless slavery to the necessity of 
rhyme, and so on. I am no Spencer; indeed, the 
only things I have in common with that philosopher 
are a taste for billiards and the recollection of a 
single visit to the Derby. To me there is a single 
broad division which connoisseurs may find useful 
in arranging their collections : in one class we may 
put those poets who are specifically cranky; in the 
other those (some silly, some quite sensible people 

43 



Books in General 

apart from their artistic proclivities) who (Macau- 
lay's Robert Montgomery is the type) try to write 
poems like other people's, but whose total lack of 
poetic perception leads them into strange aberra- 
tions of expression. 

The first kind are comparatively rare, but there 
are some good examples still going strong. There 
is, for instance, a gentleman (at one time a distin- 
guished scholar of Balliol) who describes himself 
as " The Modern Homer," and has written a num- 
ber of epics, including The Human Epic, The Epic 
of London, the Epic of Charlemagne, and The 
Epic of God and the Devil. Preoccupation with 
his matter leads him to such phrases as: 

When Murder is on the tapis 
Then the Devil is happy. 

But he, perhaps, is not so interesting as Mr. William 
Nathan Stedman, who used to live in London, and 
now, I believe, is settled in Australia. This gentle- 
man is addicted to prefaces proving that Mr. Glad- 
stone, " this Dirty Old Devil," " this sly old 
wizard, a protoplasm from the abyss of nowhere," 
was the Beast of the Revelations, and he has an 
aversion from Mr. R. J. Campbell, whom he calls 
" moo-cow, kid-gloved Campbell." It is well worth 
while buying his Sonnets, Lays and Lyrics. The 
poems themselves are not so amusing, though we 
sometimes came across such ambiguous phrases as: 

44 



The Beauties of Badness 

And when upon your dainty breast I lay 

My wearied head — more soft than eiderdown. 

But the illustrations — wood-blocks from eminent 
artists like Albert Diirer and Louis Wain — are 
charmingly irrelevant, and the prose passages are 
unique. The poet refers to the Laureateship — " an 
office I refused after Tennyson's death, though made 
with the offer of a premier's daughter and £30,000 " 
— and he is violently down on critics who have 
failed to see the merits of a certain novelist whom he 
calls " Queen Marie," " a woman who did you 
no wrong, nor envied ye your bones and offal, 
but gave Most Interesting Books for your better- 
ment and education. Are ye not dirty dogs and 
devils? Eh? " " Bull-browed bastards " is one of 
the mildest terms he applies to the critics. 

Difficult to place in either class are the poets who 
have some technical faculty, who are not necessarily 
cranks, but who endeavour to put such extraordi- 
narily prosy things into verse that the result is as 
comic as though they were. I have, for example, a 
book containing " a lyrical romance in verse," which 
tells a story, that might have gone quite well in 
prose, of a man who falls in love with a girl and has 
long discussions with her about politics. The 
author's choice of a metrical form leads him to pages 
and pages of this sort of thing: 

/ ceased, and somewhat eagerly she asked: 
" Then you would justify the Socialist, 

45 



Books in General 

Or Anarchist, the brute assassin, masked 

As a reformer, him who has dismissed 
All scruples, and himself or others tasked 
To murder innocence? Can there exist 
A reason to excuse Luccheni's action. 
Of life's great rights most dastardly in- 
fraction? " 

'' Excuse it, no! " I said; " nor justify it; 

^ut understand it yes! — / find confusion 
In both your questions; and, your words imply 

it, 
They have their base in popular illusion. 

In Socialism and Anarchism, deny it 

Who will, there's no imperative inclusion 

Of violence. Each, aiming at reform, 

Would lay life's ever-raging life and 

storm." 

The growth of the Socialist and Suffragist move- 
ments has led to a great increase in this kind of 
argumentative verse; but the bad poems in the 
Conservative or Mihtarist interests are generally 
very much worse, a type-specimen being this: 

And so with foes about us 
Just waiting for their chance 

We must become a nation armed 
hike Germany and France. 

Another example of Imperialist verse is: 
46 



The Beauties of Badness 

I'm old John Bull of England, 

My triumphs are in song. 
I've fought and won great victories 

Which did not take me long. 

I've fought in many a battle 

By sea as well as land. 
I've fought in Russia, Belgium, 

Africa and India's golden strand, 

which occurs in a work appealing for better treat- 
ment for British Honduras. 

But most of the best bad verse is not propagandist. 
Amongst the classics of the kind the Works of 
Johnston-Smith rank high. These have been pub- 
lished complete in one volume, but the best of them 
are to be found in a smaller book entitled The 
Captain of the Dolphin. Mr. Johnston-Smith had 
a great vocabulary and peculiar gifts of metaphor 
and of abrupt conclusion. Here are some typical 
passages : 

A balminess the darkened hours had brought from 

out the South, 
Each breaker doffed its cap of white and shut its 

blatant mouth. 

Strike, strike your flag, Sidonia, 

And lessen death and pain; 
" Strike," *' Fight " are but synonyma 

For misery to Spain. 

47 



Books in General 

On speedy wing the graceful sea-fowl follow fast — 
They seem to me the souls of seamen drowned, 

Who have for sailors, ships and ocean's briny blast 
Dumb love which they are yearning to propound. 

O'er the sea's edge the sun, a dazzling disc, 
In splendour hangs, preparing for his plunge; 

Upon the heaven's bright page he stamps an asterisk 
Of yellow beams which fVestern things expunge. 

Reluctant I leave, like a lover who goes 
From the side of the maid of his choice. 

By whom he is held with a cord actuose 
Spun out of her beauty and voice. 

" Actuose " is verv characteristic of this poet, who 
uses enormous numbers of astonishing words of 
which he does not tell us the meaning, although he 
gives us a glossary containing such definitions as: 

Derelict. An abandoned ship. 
Outward-bound. Sailing from home. 
Yo-heave-ho! A phrase used by sailors when two 
or more pull in concert at the same rope. 

One of his nicest surprises is the ending of: 

Where the sun circles round for the half of the year 
And is cold — like a yellow balloon. 

The kind of thrill produced by this unexpected end- 
48 



The Beauties of Badness 

ing is, of course, common in verse. Some readers 
will be acquainted with the epitaph : 

Here beneath this stone at rest 
Lies the dear dog who loved us best. 
Within his heart was nothing mean, 
He seemed just like a human being. 

But a University poet's anticlimax on Actaeon may 
not be so generally known : 

His hands were changed to feet, and he in short 
Became a stag. . . . 

Nor this affecting stanza from a woman's book re- 
cently published: 

What o' the wind? 
It hisses through a vessel's spars. 

What o' the wind? 
■ It is in truth to mercy blind. 

It surely from all rest debars. 
And even frights the sturdy " tars." 

What o' the wind? 

An equal bathos is sometimes produced by inappro- 
priate metaphor. The worst instance I know is 
found in the poems of quite a well-known writer who 
describes roses: 

Aft before and fore behind 
Swung upon the summer wind. 

49 



Books in General 

But the author of a recent drama of the Near East 
came pretty near it with 

. . . the diamond shaft of the fierce searchlight 
From the lens of the crystal moon. 

The chase after the unusual almost always means 
disaster. This is another recent example : 

/ have found thee, dear! on the edge of time, 
Just over the brink of the world of sense; 
In dream-life that's ours, when with love intense 
We function above, in a fairer clime. 

I have found thee there, in a world of rest. 
In the fair sweet gardens of sunlit bliss. 
Where the sibilant sound of an Angel's kiss 
Is the sanctioned seal of a Holy quest. 

But nothing produced in this manner is so attrac- 
tive as the merely commonplace can be when carried 
to its farthest pitch. A year or two ago a young 
American published a volume with a preface ending: 
" He was apprised of the death of his invalid 
brother, whose remaining portion of his grand- 
father's legacy accruing to him facilitated the publi- 
cation of this book." The epilogue ran as follows: 

Oh, the rain, rain, rain! 

All the day it doth complain. 

On the window-pane, just near me, 

50 



The Beauties of Badness 

How it sputters, oh, how dreary! 
One becomes so awful weary 
With the rain, rain, rain. 



The difference between this and Verlaine's // pleut 
sur la ville would be hard to define, but there cer- 
tainly is a marked difference. 

Most of the poets quoted above have, at any 
rate, the gift of moving with some freedom within 
their metres. But some people who publish verse 
cannot even do that, however simple the forms they 
choose. They struggle through their poems like 
flies in treacle. A good example may be taken 
from a book (excellently produced) issued only a 
year ago by one of the foremost publishers. Apart 
from its other qualities, it shows a most extraordi- 
narily revolutionary conception of the way in which 
lines may be ended : 

A man's home is a woman's breast. There see 

Hj7n in infancy, and later, seeks he 

Inspiration from the self-same source. 'Tis 

His home, t'wards which, from cradle to the grave. 

He doth gravitate, accomplishing his 

Greatest works by aid of it. Man on the 

Woman's aid depends. Oft unconsciously 

'Tis given, oft loyally the truth's in 

Loving breast safeguarded — less often 'tis 

In cruelty withheld. 

51 



Books in General 

This supplies the only case I know of in which the 
article " the " has been used as a rhyme. But for 
sheer struggle the poem does not excel parts of this 
other one, which was published in a recent anthology : 

Along a marsh a hungry crane 

With patient steps, his way did take 

Each cranny of the rivage fain 
To ransack with his slender beak, 

When, suddenly, his watchful eye. 
At hut four paces distance, saw 

A worm, that hack, as suddenly, 

To his subterranean hole did draw. 

Nathless the crane did, straight, begin 
His beak, and claw, alike, to ply 

And hoping the retreat he, in 

The end, of the insect might destroy. 

The turf did tear up, and dispel 

The clods, and with such vigour strive 

That he, at last, perceives his bill 
At of the cave the depth arrive; 

But lo! just when of all his toil. 
The object he was nigh to get. 

Beneath his very nib, a mole. 
Without ado, devoured it! 



Thus often, lurchers, onward who 
Are prone by shady ways to creep 



52 



The Beauties of Badness 

May the reward to those that^s due 
IVho, openly, have acted, reap. 

This fable is called by the author A Surreptitious 
Catch; but it might equally fitly have been entitled 
The Apotheosis of the Comma. 

I have, as I say, insufficient scientific talent to 
enter upon an analytic criticism of this kind of 
poetry; and in this brief discourse I have done little 
more than string quotations together. But that 
operation is all that is needed to serve my present 
object — viz. the propagation of the cult. Any one 
who has ever read the novel of Mrs. Amanda 
M'Kittrick Ros knows how much sustenance the 
human spirit may derive from the byways of litera- 
ture; but it is very rarely that one meets, even 
amongst the best-read of men, one who is conscious 
of the peculiar poetic treasures that lie about in the 
publishers' offices and on the second-hand bookstalls 
simply imploring to be collected. 



53 



More Badness 

MY appeal for interesting specimens of bad 
verse has brought me a large mass of 
material; but most of my correspondents 
seem not to realize that merely feeble and meaning- 
less verse is so common as not to be worth preserv- 
ing. The best single line I have received — sent me 
by a notorious dramatist who has forgotten its place 
of origin — is: 

The beetle booms adown the glooms and bumps 
among the clumps; 

and what promised to be the best whole poem is 
one that begins by rhyming " Atlantic " to " blan- 
ket." But when I had got through it I found that 
my correspondent had got it out of a visitors' book 
in an hotel. I really cannot count anything that 
has not been properly published; although I confess 
to being tempted by such lines as: 

Farewell, farewell, bonny St. Ives, 
May I live to see you again. 

Your air preserves people's lives 
And you have so little rain. 

54 



More Badness 

So really the best acquisition I have made is the 
following, the author of which I should like to 
discover: 

In this imperfect^ gloomy scene 

Of complicated ill, 
How rarely is a day serene, 

The throbbing bosom still! 
Will not a beauteous landscape bright 

Or music's soothing sound, 
Console the heart, afford delight. 

And throw sweet peace around? 
They may ; but never comfort lend 
Like an accomplished female friend! 

With such a friend the social hour 

In sweetest pleasure glides; 
There is, in female charms a power 

Which lastingly abides; 
The fragrance of the blushing rose. 

Its tints and splendid hue, 
Will, with the seasons, decompose, 

And pass as flitting dew; 
On firmer ties his joys depend 
Who has a faithful female friend! 

As orbs revolve, and years recede. 

And seasons onward roll, 
The fancy may on beauties feed 

With discontented soul; 

5S 



Books in General 

A thousand objects bright and fair 

May for a moment shine, 
Yet many a sigh and many a tear 

But mark their swift decline; 
While lasting joys the man attend 
Who has a polished female friend! 

My correspondent says that he received this from 
a friend (perhaps a polished female friend), who 
did not tell him whence it was extracted. I myself 
have seen two lines of it before — the last two of 
the second stanza. They occurred in a letter I re- 
ceived some time ago from a clerical acquaintance 
who was apologizing for having got engaged. He, 
on inquiry, pretended (with a mendacity very rare 
amongst clergymen) that he had written the lines 
himself; but I did not believe him. The poem bears 
the marks of the earlier decades of the nineteenth 
century. Can it be by Thomas Haynes Bayly? 

One interesting thing I should like to trace is a 
metrical version of Holy Writ containing such lines 
as these on Jonah: 

Three dreadful days beneath the deep, 
In fish's belly dark lay he. 
How terrible methinks his fate. 
May no such torment fall on me. 

The most ingenious writer who contributes the " Ob- 
servator " column to the Observer offers me a couple 



More Badness 

of specimens, one of which is new to me. The old 
one is the late Mr. Alfred Austin's remark about 
Nature : 

She sins upon a larger scale 
Because she is herself more large. 

And the other, a touching narrative of a gipsy 
woman who fell ill, was a discovery of Andrew 
Lang's : 

There we leave her, 

There we leave her, 
Far from where her swarthy kindred roam. 

In the Scarlet Fever, 

Scarlet Fever, 
Scarlet Fever Convalescent Home. 



57 



A Mystery Solved 



APPARENTLY the poem about " a^polished 
female friend " is to be found in one of 
Mr. E. V. Lucas's books. It was written, 
it seems, by a parson named Whur or Whurr, who 
flourished in Norfolk about a century ago. Whur 
delighted in all calamities, and described a father, on 
the birth of a child with no arms, exclaiming: 
" This armless child will ruin me." No one has yet 
brought to my notice any whole volumes of bad 
verse worth acquiring, though various choice frag- 
ments have reached me. There is an epithalamium 
ending: 

And never, never she'll forget 

The happy, happy day, 

When in the church, before God's priest. 

She gave herself away. 

There is an in memoriam poem beginning: 

Dear Friends, we had a sudden Blast 
Which came to us unexpected. 

And there is a loyal song to their present Majesties 

in which occur the lines: 

58 



A Mystery Solved 

Our King and Queen are never proud 
They mingle with the densest crowd. 

But the most attractive new specimen is a poem on 
the late monarch's death. It was printed and sold 
as a broadsheet in London, and runs: 

The will of God we must obey. 
Dreadful — our King taken away! 
The greatest friend of the nation, 
Mighty monarch and protection! 

Heavenly Father, help in sorrow 
Queen Mother, and them to follow, 
What to do without him who has gone! 
Pray help! help! and do lead us on. 

Greatest sorrow England ever had 
When death took away our Dear Dad; 
A king was he from head to sole, 
Loved by his people one and all. 

His mighty work for the Nation, 
Making peace and strengthening union — 
Always at it since on the throne: 
Saved the country more than billion. 

There are two more verses. Personally, I find this 
considerably more interesting than any of Mr. Al- 
fred Noyes's various Coronation Odes. 

59 



Carrying the Alliance too far 

WHY is it that Japanese authors are allowed 
to write in English newspapers any sort 
of barbarous jargon they like? Mr. 
Yoshio Markino was the first to be licensed. To 
start with, one found his " delightfully quaint " Eng- 
lish amusing in a mild way, but with repetition his 
sedulously cherished howlers became irritating. 
Still, he was only one; and primarily a painter at 
that. But now Mr. Yone Noguchi has turned up, 
and he is doing the same thing. Mr. Noguchi is 
considered in Japan — at least so his friends tell 
us — the first poet of the day. Those who remem- 
bered his last residence here assured us that on his 
return he would compel all men — like Helen of 
Troy or Mr. Tagore. He comes. One is prepared 
to be conquered. One turns to one's Westminster 
Gazette to read his works; and one finds there 
columns of stuff, possibly inspired, but certainly writ- 
ten in such pidgin-English that one cannot bother 
to read it. 

Mr. Noguchi's pidgin-English is not of quite so 
curious a breed as Mr. Markino's, but it is suffi- 
ciently bad. One does not blame him for that. 
60 



Carrying the Alliance too far 

He writes English a great deal better than I do 
Japanese. But why on earth cannot the newspapers 
who print his works translate them into normal Eng- 
lish? Is it that their sub-editors shrink from the 
task? Is it that they fondly believe that we are 
all so fascinated by English of the Noguchi-Mark- 
inesque brand that we had much rather have it than 
any other sort; or is it that a tradition has been 
established that Anglo-Japanese articles are not to 
be altered? If this is true, it is a thousand pities 
that, for all their charm, Mr. Markino's early pro- 
ductions were not unmercifully damned. What 
should we say if newspapers began printing in all 
their native crudity articles by Frenchmen and Ger- 
mans imperfectly acquainted with the tongue of this 
country? Suppose some journal came out next week 
with an essay beginning: 

" What sadly fall the leaves of automne ! What 
of sadness tumble on the heart because that the 
winter put his snows on all the country. And sad 
also the spring, the spring who arouse the love in 
the soul, and who make to think to all the springs 
of the time past. My heart weep like a bird who 
have lose her companion." 

Or suppose a German were allowed by the West- 
minster to present its readers with a political article 
opening: 

6i 



Books in General 

" No Dutcher has the by Mr. Gamaliel Zoop, 
Amerikansh postaltelegrafkommunikationdepart- 
ment minister on politishekonomy famose lecture 
to a at Manchester people-comlng-together delivered 
recently without outerorderly pleasure read." 

Obviously we should not tolerate It. Can it be 
that, even after the war with Russia, even after 
Japanese professors have written works on sociology, 
the superstition lingers here that a thing cannot 
possibly be truly Japanese unless it has the odour of 
an old curiosity shop? 

None of this, I may say, is meant to be discourte- 
ous to Mr. Noguchi. I merely suggest that it would 
be better for him if he vetoed every endeavour to 
print his English articles as he writes them. If 
he were the Japanese Homer — indeed, he may be 
that for all I know — I should say precisely the 
same thing. Can he be aware that even his faulty 
spelling goes uncorrected? 



62 



May 1914 



I WRITE *' these lines " just after arriving in 
Berlin. Not that I have anything to say about 
that. I merely mention the fact. It may ex- 
plain my difficulties. The journey is really very 
dull. All those hundreds of miles over the Great 
Plain of Europe with never a hill except the ridge of 
Minden, very little water, nothing but endless flat 
fields sprinkled with trees, church spires, and red 
farm-houses. There is simply nothing to look at. 
If you put your head out of the window at Osna- 
briick, you may see some coal; and at Miinster you 
may, if you choose, speculate as to which of the 
people on the platform are Anabaptists. That Is 
not much during a twelve-hour run from Flushing. 

A pleasant travelling companion is an alleviation 
on such occasions. The other occupant of my car- 
riage had points about her. She was a young, cheer- 
ful, and rather obese Jewess going home with a 
plethora of scarves and wraps, several boxes, two 
lobsters (for her father), and a canary. At Goch 
she was incensed to find that she had to pay a heavy 
duty on the lobsters, so heavy that it would have paid 
her better to get the creatures in Berlin and have a 
drink on the balance. This story might make an 

63 



Books in General 

illustration for one of Mr. Lloyd George's homely 
speeches on Free Trade. But there was no duty on 
the canary. In his little cage, covered with a green 
curtain, the canary sat, non-dutiable but very phleg- 
matic. At frequent intervals his mistress lifted the 
green curtain, looked him in the eyes with a bewitch- 
ing smile, and piped " Peep, Peep." The bird never 
repHed, though perhaps he looked his response. 
The lady then turned to me and said, " Is 'e not a 
nice bird? Is 'e not goot? " and common polite- 
ness — leaving gallantry out of the question — com- 
pelled me to reply always, " Yes, a beautiful little 
bird." About twice an hour she retired to the din- 
ing-car and came back exuding smiles and sighs 
" I half joost 'ad a bifsteck. I dawn't like steck." 
How true it is that in hfe we have to be content 
with second-bests ! But I did not discuss the mat- 
ter. 

In intervals of silence I finished Mrs. Russell Bar- 
rington's Life of Walter Bagehot (Longmans, 12s. 
6d. net). It is a strange thing — and unfortunate, 
since so much material has disappeared with the pas- 
sage of time — that Bagehot should have had to 
wait nearly forty years for a biography. But now 
it has come it is an interesting one. The author 
being Bagehot's sister-in-law (daughter of James 
Wilson, who founded the Economist) ^ the work has 
rather a family air. Bagehot's more obvious virtues 
are a little too much insisted upon, and excessive 
64 



May 1914 

importance Is attributed to irrelevant details. The 
long description of his ancestry and birthplace, for 
instance, might have been curtailed. But the Life 
is well written; it contains a great many interesting 
letters, and it gives a really living picture of one 
whom Lord Bryce has called " the most original 
mind of his generation." 

One would wish, however, for a supplement giv- 
ing a fuller analysis of Bagehot's literary work. 
Mrs. Barrington gives little more than a list of the 
titles of his essays. It is true that to most people 
Bagehot is still primarily the political and economic 
writer. There are few intelligent Englishmen to- 
day who have not been influenced by The English 
Constitution and, in a lesser degree, by Physics and 
Politics. His Economic Studies make the rudiments 
of political economy as simple and even as entertain- 
ing as a good fairy-tale, and those who have read 
Lombard Street speak of it as a masterpiece. But 
the most extraordinary thing about it is that this 
man, who knew all about currency, who was in the 
confidence of Chancellors of the Exchequer, and who 
invented Treasury Bills, was also one of the most 
illuminating and sympathetic literary critics that 
England has ever produced. Personally I find his 
literary essays inferior to those of no other English 
critic who was not himself a poet, and I think that in 
some respects, though not in all, they are better 
than Arnold's. 



Books in General 

Probably Bagehot's celebrity as an economist 
militated for some years after his death against the 
popularity of his literary work. Many literary 
people, looking through the complete list of his 
works, and seeing Literary and Biographical Studies 
jostling shoulders with works on money, may very 
pardonably have assumed that these Studies, how- 
ever able, must have been of a dry, hard character. 
They are very far from that; no English criticism 
is more human than his, less coldly intellectual; his 
temperament, naturally emotional and mystical, was 
most valuably reinforced by the balance, the toler- 
ance, the sanity that were developed by his more 
mundane activities, but the temporal man in him' 
never overcame the eternal. Such essays as those 
on Hartley Coleridge, on Shelley, on Dickens, on 
Cowper, on the Edinburgh Reviewers, are bound be- 
fore long to be recognized as among the great clas- 
sics of English criticism. Naturally he was not im- 
peccable; posterity may think, for example, that he 
attached too much importance to his friend Clough. 
But he is usually completely convincing. Take the 
following passage from the comparison of Words- 
worth and Jeffrey: 

" A clear, precise, discriminating intellect shrinks 
at once from the symbolic, the unfounded, the 
indefinite. The misfortune is that mysticism is 
true. There certainly are kinds of truths, borne in 
as it were instinctively on the human intellect, most 
66 



May 1914 

influential on the character and the heart, yet hardly 
capable of stringent statement, difficult to limit by 
an elaborate definition. Their course is shadowy; 
the mind seems rather to have seen than to see them, 
more to feel after than definitely apprehend them. 
They commonly involve an infinite element which, of 
course, cannot be stated precisely, or else a first 
principle — an original tendency of our intellectual 
constitution, which it is impossible not to feel, and 
yet which it is hard to extricate in terms and words. 
Of this latter kind is what has been called the relig- 
ion of Nature, or more exactly, perhaps, the religion 
of the imagination. This is an interpretation of the 
world. Accordingly, to it the beauty of the universe 
has a meaning, its grandeur a soul, and its sublimity 
an expression. As we gaze on the faces of those 
whom we love; as we watch the light of life in the 
dawning of their eyes, and the play of their features, 
and the wildness of their animation; as we trace in 
changing lineaments a varying sign; as a charm and 
a thrill seem to run along the tone of a voice, to 
haunt the mind with a mere word; as a tone seems 
to roar in the ear; as a trembling fancy hears words 
that are unspoken; so in Nature the mystical sense 
finds a motion in the mountain, and a power in the 
waves, and a meaning in the long white line of the 
shore, and a thought in the blue of heaven, and a 
gushing soul in the buoyant light, an unbounded 
being in the vast void of air, and 

67 



Books in General 

Wakeful watching in the pointed stars 

" There is a philosophy in this which might be 
explained, if explaining were to our purpose. It 
might be advanced that there are original sources 
of expression in the essential grandeur and sublim- 
ity of Nature, of an analogous though fainter kind 
to those familiar, inexplicable signs by which we 
trace in the very face and outward lineaments of man 
the existence and working of the mind within. But 
be this as it may, it is certain that Mr. Wordsworth 
preached this kind of religion and that Lord Jeffrey 
did not beheve a word of It." 

The visionary and the epigrammatist are near 
allied, and both the practical and the Ideal in Bage- 
hot are illustrated in his own phrase: " If you would 
vanquish Earth, you must invent Heaven." Bage- 
hot, as he appeared to ordinary people every day, is 
portrayed in another sentence. " He left many," It 
Is said, " with the idea that he was a good fellow, yet 
with no idea that he was a great man." A great 
man can have no better epitaph. 



68 



May 1914: The Leipzig 
Exhibition . 

ANY one who imagines that the English can, 
or at all events do, compete with the Ger- 
mans in beauty of book-production had bet- 
ter go to Leipzig this summer and visit the Buchge- 
werbe und Graphik Exhibition — or " Bugra," as it 
is universally called in Germany. The new railway 
station — the finest in the world — is also worth 
going to see; but that, presumably, will last after this 
year. In many respects the exhibition is like all 
other big exhibitions. It is much too enormous to 
be capable of thorough inspection. Leaving out of 
account the huge buildings devoted to the mechanics 
of printing and so on, there are a palace ("The 
Hall of Kultur,'' of course), filled with engravings 
and photographs; a colossal structure containing the 
exhibits of German publishers of books and music; 
and pavilions for most of the other nations of the 
earth. Even Corea has a building — though I did 
not see it — and Siam is well to the fore. The ex- 
hibition grounds are very extensive; they contain 
(need I say?) a " Street of Nations," many foun- 
tains, and countless cafes. There is a reproduction 
of Heidelberg Castle, full of drinking-cups and the 

69 



Books in General 

weapons with which German students put a little 
interest into each other's faces. There is a Bavar- 
ian Hall, where real peasant maidens bring your 
beer and the latest and cheapest musical-comedy 
tunes are played by real peasant musicians, with 
feathered hats and costume complete down to the 
bare knees that they insist on retaining in the face 
of a proclamation by the local Catholic hierarchs to 
the effect that such a display of naked charms is 
grossly indecent. There is no wiggle-woggle, but 
there is a waterchute and a shooting-gallery whose 
proprietors invite you to come in and try your skill 
at "live objects." The man who was with me — 
he is a person who, like Mr. Galsworthy, would not 
touch a fly " save " (as the old verse has it) " in the 
way of kindness," — refused to come in. Naively 
distrustful of aliens he was afraid, he said, that 
the targets might be dogs. But he need not have 
been alarmed, for we were afterwards informed that 
they were merely big game thrown on a screen by a 
cinematograph. When you hit an animal it did not 
drop, but a red light showed. 

Naturally comparisons between the exhibits should 
be made very cautiously; the exhibition is being held 
on German soil and the German display is much 
larger than any other. In many respects England 
shows up very well. The English section in the 
Halle der Kultur is certainly as good as any, and 
the etchings shown by Mr. Muirhead Bone, Mr. 
70 



May 1914: The Leipzig Exhibition 

Charles Shannon, Sir Charles Holroyd, and other 
British artists are possibly the very best things in the 
place. The main English exhibit is housed in a 
pleasant Tudor building with some beautiful rooms. 
The Shakespeare exhibit of editions and portraits is 
most interesting for those who like that sort of thing; 
a fine collection of original Beardsley drawings has 
been lent by Mr. Lane; the Caxtons are coming; 
there are admirable specimens of the works of the 
Kelmscott, Riccardi, Florence, and other presses; 
there is a gallery of Medici prints unsurpassed by 
any colour-reproductions in the exhibition (the print 
of the Dresden Van Eyck triptych is the most com- 
pletely satisfying colour-print I have ever seen) ; and 
the elaborate bindings by Riviere's, the Oxford 
Press, and other establishments are not inferior even 
to the exquisite leather bindings by Noulhac and R. 
Kieffer shown in the French building. Everything 
our officials could have done has been done to per- 
fection; and the special exhibits have been very well 
chosen. Where we fall sadly short is in the ordi- 
nary book of commerce. 

I cannot but think that the English publishers who 
have taken stalls — and, of course, the selection of 
exhibits here had to be left to the publishers them- 
selves — could have brought together a more at- 
tractive-looking lot of books than they have done. 
Most of them — I mention no names — seem to 
have bundled together their books without any con- 

71 



Books in General 

sideratlon either of the contents or of the appear- 
ance of the volumes. Of course there are English 
publishers who have no fine books and few decent- 
looking books on their lists; but some of the speci- 
mens at Leipzig look almost like remnants which it 
Is hoped to sell off to visitors. But even if all the 
English publishers had shown all their best books, . 
and none of their worst, they would still have been 
put in the shade by the Germans. Even the French 
publishers — whose achievements in typography and 
in illustration have been great — are not now fit to 
be mentioned in the same breath as the Germans. 

The German exhibits are a revelation. The mid- 
Victorian tradition In print and design — which 
was so tenacious In Germany — has now been al- 
most completely abandoned. I don't suggest that all 
German books are more presentable than English 
ones. Scientific works, theology, and shilling fiction 
are equally ugly in both countries. But there are to- 
day in Berlin, Leipzig, and Munich at least a dozen 
firms publishing for the ordinary market books 
whose average of beauty Is far higher than that 
reached by the books of any considerable English 
publishing firm. Many thousands of really beauti- 
ful new books are now being produced every year 
In Germany; and of what can be done, especially 
in the way of making cheap books look presentable, 
our own publishers have no Idea. There is, of 
course, a much larger educated reading public In 
72 



May 1914: The Leipzig Exhibition 

Germany than In England. In every bookshop you 
are confronted by volumes of Dehmel, Hofmanns- 
thal, and other writers who, were they Englishmen, 
would never reach large circles of readers in their 
lifetimes. Anthologies of contemporary German 
poets sell literally by tens of thousands; and you can 
even get an infinite variety of doses of classical and 
modern authors by dropping pennies into automatic 
machines on the stations. This much may be ad- 
mitted: that there is a larger literary public and 
more interest in contemporary art, literary and pic- 
torial. But, even granting all that, the German pub- 
lishers in meeting the market have shown a taste, 
and above all an enterprise (sometimes reaching 
audacity, no doubt), which most of our own publish- 
ers have never revealed in the slightest degree. 

To give a full account of the show is beyond my 
ability, desire, and space. But in looking at the 
latest products of commercial colour-printing in the 
French pavilion I was struck by the extraordinary 
divorce between craftsmanship and taste in modern 
industry. Here were some of the vilest pictures (I 
don't mean morally) ever moulded by the mind of 
man; yet the experts were raving over them as being 
the last word in their own kind of colour-process. 
Needless to say, the exhibition, not being half over, 
is not yet completely ready. The Italian pavilion, 
when I was at the exhibition, could not be entered at 
all, and there were other lacunae all over the place. 

73 



Books in General 

This Is the kind of thing that makes the whole world 
kin. 

Amongst the German authors whose portraits 
grace the walls of the exhibition is Mr. George 
Bernard Shaw. They have naturalized him, like 
Shakespeare, and the next thing will certainly be 
a statue at Weimar. 



74 



The Mantle of Sir Edwin - 

I HAVE just spent three days reading Mr. E. G. 
Harman's Edmund Spenser and the Imperson- 
ations of Francis Bacon, published by the firm 
of Constable. There are books which he who runs 
may read; there are also books from which he who 
reads will run. This to me comes into neither cate- 
gory. It is very large and crowded with most com- 
plicated detail; it is, though quite competently writ- 
ten, devoid of literary grace; and it supports a mon- 
strous thesis with arguments many of which are of 
staggering absurdity. Yet in point of deadly fasci- 
nation it vies with the basihsk. It is a monument of 
the " scientific method." The author's learning and 
industry are terrifying; his tone seems completely 
dispassionate; he proceeds from discovery to discov- 
ery with mild ruthlessness; and not the most uncom- 
promising of Wospolus was ever more sternly re- 
solved to embrace logical conclusions. His chief 
fault is that his premises are usually arbitrary or 
quite insufficient; but the objective charm of his mas- 
sive progress, as of a steam-roller, from stage to 
stage, is not affected by this. 

Mr. Harman does not in this volume discuss in 
detail Bacon's authorship of Shakespeare's plays. 

75 



Books in General 

He assumes that. He assumes also that Bacon did 
publish literature under the rose and that he did 
employ impersonators; his reasons being that he had 
to express his feelings and that acknowledgement of 
authorship would have damaged his prospects of po- 
Htical promotion. This much granted, Mr. Har- 
man looks around for writings in which he thinks he 
can detect traces of Bacon and examines the evidence 
for their reputed authorships. He does not descend 
to the puerile level of the late Sir Edwin Durning- 
Lawrence, with his " Hie, Haec, Hog." He says 
nothing of cryptogram. But in case after case he 
finds ( I ) that there are marks of Baconian thought 
and language, (2) that allegorical references to Ba- 
con's political disappointments may be found, (3) 
that documentary evidence supporting accepted au- 
thorships Is very slight. Nothing stops him. 
Where there is a real resemblance in style things are 
easy. Where there are marked differences we are 
asked to note the fact that Bacon's method enabled 
him to write In a variety of styles as though seri- 
ous writers expressing their inmost selves could put 
on styles like trousers. If somebody has borne wit- 
ness that an Elizabethan wrote his own works, then 
that somebody was in the plot too. 

As to Spenser, with whom Mr. Harman chiefly 
deals, one Is certainly struck with the paucity of the 
evidence for him. We know less about him than we 
know about Shakespeare; and his biographers have 
76 



The Mantle of Sir Edwin 

had to rely almost entirely upon " Internal evidence " 
drawn from his works. But personally I must say 
that I prefer their methods to Mr. Harman's. He, 
analysing exhaustively the plot of the Faerie Queene, 
with its Britomarts, Arthegalls, and Blatant Beasts, 
finds a knowledge of court life that could not be pos- 
sessed by Spenser, who lived In Ireland and was (ac- 
cording to him) an ex-Board School boy in a small 
Civil Service job — which is at any rate politer than 
*' drunken, Illiterate clown." This is question-beg- 
ging; but what shall we say of the assumption that 
If Spenser had written the poem the rivers of Ire- 
land would have been described as fully as the rivers 
of England? Why should the emigrant Civil serv- 
ant know anything about the rivers of Ireland? As 
far as that goes, there Is one slip In the description 
of the rivers of England which indicates to my mind 
that the author relied on some Inaccurate map for 
his Information about them. The Baconian author- 
ship forces Mr. Harman to the conclusion that some 
of Spenser's sonnets were written by Bacon when 
he was eight or nine years old. But Mr. Harman 
Is a strong man. After all, Mozart was a pre- 
cocious child, so why not Bacon? He does not 
shrink from this any more than he shrinks from 
arguing that any book or letter which favourably 
mentions one of Bacon's cryptic works must also 
have been written or instigated by him. They must 
have been written by him, and, this granted. Internal 
corroboration must be sought for. Anything is 

77 



Books in General 

good enough for this purpose. Mr, Harman even 
finds evidence in the occurrence in several " Bacon- 
ian " works of the phrase " golden wyres " as ap- 
plied to the Queen's hair. If he would read the 
body of Elizabethan lyrics, or even extracts of them 
in such a contemporary anthology as England's 
Parnassus, he would find that an Elizabethan poet 
could no more help comparing a lady's Hayre to 
Golden Wyres than he could help likening her Teares 
to Pearles or her Brests to luorie. 

But there is no space here for detailed examina- 
tion. It is enough to yield oneself to the pleasure 
of following the Harmanian trail. I have noted the 
works which in the course of his narrative or in foot- 
notes he ascribes to Bacon. The Authorized Ver- 
sion of the Bible is not mentioned. But, apart from 
his voluminous acknowledged writings, Bacon wrote 
the works of Spenser (including the Faerie Oiieene, 
the longest poem in the world, which Bacon pub- 
lished before he was out of his twenties) ; the works 
of Shakespeare ; practically the whole body of Eliza- 
bethan poetical criticism (including Webbe's Dis- 
course of Poesie, Puttenham's Art of Poesie, Sid- 
ney's Apologie, Daniel's A Defence of Ryme, and 
Meres's Palladis Tamia) ; many of the poems of 
Gascoigne (written by Bacon before he was twelve) ; 
certain works imputed to Nashe, Greene, and Ga- 
briel Harvey; the poems of Sir Walter Raleigh and 
the Last Fight of the "Revenge" ; the works of 
78 



The Mantle of Sir Edwin 

Essex; Sidney's Arcadia and Astrophel and Stella 
(with this key Bacon unlocked his heart) ; Lyly's 
Eiiphues (a long book) ; Bryskett's Discourse of 
Civil Life; Sir Humphrey Gilbert's Discourses and 
the account of his last voyage; Leicester's Common- 
wealth and Leicester's Ghost; and other minor 
scraps. If this be all correct, we shall have to re- 
vise our opinion of the Elizabethan time as a time 
replete with various genius. All we shall be able 
to refer to now will be " the spacious Bacon of 
great Elizabeth." 

An enormous number of people — including sup- 
posed writers and their relations — must have been 
in the secret. Sometimes they must have marvelled 
at Bacon's extraordinary behaviour, as for instance 
when he wrote for Raleigh a laudatory poem on the 
Queen: 

" Bacon (who, in my opinion, is the author of 
the poem) makes use of the opportunity in taking up 
the personality of Ralegh to express his own feel- 
ings. He was undoubtedly most unhappy at his ex- 
clusion from access and the waning of all his hopes 
of advancement. This is what is reflected under the 
disguise of Ralegh's loss of favour in the poem." 

They must have wondered how on earth Bacon 
expected his grievances to be remedied if his com- 
plaints were published over another man's name, 

79 



Books in General 

and why, if Raleigh could address poems to the 
Queen in propria persona without loss of caste, 
Bacon could not do the same. But no doubt most 
of them, for many were impecunious, did not allow 
such questions to bother them much. They were 
content to take Bacon's bribes for the use of their 
names. What he must have spent in subsidies to 
sham authors one gasps to contemplate. No won- 
der that for years he was in such financial straits, and 
that at one point things came to such a pass with him 
that he was arrested for debt. 



80 



"The Cattle of the Boyne" 

I HAVE referred before to the frequency of mis- 
prints in the penny Times. It does seem a 
pity that the conductors of the paper cannot 
keep it up to its old traditions in this respect. Last 
week there was a more curious instance than usual. 
These words appeared: 

" The anniversary of the Cattle of the Boyne 
was celebrated with unusual enthusiasm throughout 
Canada." 

I was so moved by the report of these zoo- 
logical novelties that I made a little poem about 
them, full of Celtic twilight. It runs thus : 

THE SANDS OF BOYNE 

Och, Geoffrey, go and call the Cattle home, 
And call the Cattle home, 
And call the Cattle home, 
Acrost the sands of Boyne. 
Shure, ye're the hhoy that's got inured to foam. 
So come, bring in the koine. 

Och, are they fish, flesh, fowl or good red herrings? 
Perhaps they are red herrings, 

8i 



Books in General 

Forlorn and wildered herrinffs^ 
Strayed from their native broine, 
This hapless party which has lost its bearings 
Fornint the sands of ^Boyne. 

No, no, they have no herring for their father. 
The proof-reader's their father, 
A most prolific father 
By mishap or desoign. 
If this is what wan penny means, I'd rather 
Stump up the ancient coin 

Than daily find — Och tempora, Och Times ! — 
Bad grammar in my Times 
And misprints in my Times 
In ivry other loine, 
Capped by this worst of typographic crimes 
" The CATTLE of the Boyne "! 

But perhaps one ought not really to complain of 
misprints, even in the Times, when they are funny. 



82 



August 1914 



AND it Is less than three months since I was 
writing complacently about the Leipzig 
book exhibition! I wrote about the ex- 
quisite collections of bindings and drawings, the 
bands, the parading crowds of peaceful Germans, 
the pavilions of all nations from Holland to Siam, 
and the charming Tudor structure erected by Britain, 
with its long low halls containing cases of Shake- 
speare folios and editions from the Kelmscott Press. 
Enormous crowds from all over Europe would, it 
was hoped, visit the exhibition as the summer wore 
on. " August, of course," said the officials to me, 
" will be the month." 

The buildings in the wide Street of Nations are 
still there, no doubt. The flags, perhaps, have been 
hauled down, but those files of white wood and 
plaster palaces still stand behind their flower-beds 
along the broad avenues. The crowds are dis- 
persed. The officials in charge of the various build- 
ings have fled to their respective domiciles. The 
cheerful male members of the Bavarian Peasants' 
Band have taken off their green hats and put on hel- 
mets, left the women behind, and gone off to burn 

83 



Books in General 

villages like their own, and disembowel sunburnt 
French peasants as naturally amiable as themselves. 
Memories so recent make the pit of one's stomach 
sink. In May last a German barber in Berlin had 
his razor at my throat, and when he scratched my 
skin he was most concerned and apologetic. 
" Nescis, mi fili, quam parva sapientia regitur mun- 
dus." The remark was made by a Swedish states- 
man in the eighteenth century. Voltaire, looking 
down from heaven — if one may risk his displeasure 
by presuming his presence in so uncongenial a 
place — must feel that since the eighteenth century 
there has been no great change, and that the human 
race is as horribly ridiculous an institution as ever 
it was. 

But here we are.* Like most other inhabitants 
of the " civilized " world, I have for the last week 
read no books, but only newspapers. Fourteen a 
day is about my average, which means nearly a 
hundred a week. And nine-tenths of them contain 
nothing that one did not know before. There never 
was a war, since telegraphs were invented, about 
which news was so scarce. Almost every rumour 
that comes through is dubious, and it is invariably 
contradicted. In successive issues and even in the 
same issue of a journal one reads that troops have 
and have not entered a certain village, that some- 
body's neutrality has and has not been violated, and 

* I have left all this as I wrote it. — S. E. 
84 



f 



August 1914 

that a naval engagement has and has not taken place. 
If you go over the eight pages of " war news " in 
a daily and make a summary of the unquestionable 
facts contained therein, as distinguished from the ^ 
doubtful reports and the office-written padding, you 
find it could all be got into a paragraph. We have 
frequently heard that the day of the war corre- 
spondent was over. We heard it during the Russo- 
Japanese War — of which we certainly got very lit- 
tle news — and we heard it during the Balkan cam- 
paign. But at the moment of writing I have scarcely 
seen a single item regarding a single encounter which 
looked indisputable or which appeared to come direct 
from an eye-witness. Almost all the information 
we have been getting has come either from rumour 
travelling across many tongues or from official 
sources. Both these founts of news are great liars, 
the former excelling in the suggestio falsi, and the 
latter both in that and in the suppressio veri. 

The desperate straits in which we have been for 
news could be gathered (if in no other way) from 
the outlandish places of origin ascribed to reports 
that get into print. Stockholm Informs one that ad- 
vices from Teheran report a conflict at Toul; and we 
hear that the Mercure de Bruxelles states " on excel- 
lent authority " that something has happened at 
Basle. Deliberate fabrication has been at work all 
over the place. Our good old friend the doctor, 
with the cholera microbes which he puts Into wells, 

85 



Books in General 

even turned up at the very start. This mythical 
gentleman is at least as old as the Franco-German 
War of 1870, and his last appearance was in the 
Balkans. No sooner does a war start than one of 
the combatants hastens to describe his diabolical ac- 
tivities in the hope, presumably, of making the 
world's blood boil at the thought of an " outrage 
against humanity." 

The papers cannot be blamed for printing ru- 
mours, but they might give the clearest indication, 
whenever possible, of the value of their sources. 
Rumours before they get into print presumably travel 
in much the same way as after they get into print. 
Of how rapidly " news " develops I had an exper- 
ience in a club on Tuesday night. A late evening 
paper printed a brief report, stating that Aberdeen 
doctors had gone to attend to wounded who were 
being landed at Cromarty. Five minutes after I 
had seen this, I was told by a member that single 
British and German destroyers had had a brush off 
the Scottish coast. Five minutes after that the ves- 
sels had expanded into flotillas, and within the hour 
a club servant, with very gloomy face, remarked to 
me, " I don't know if you've heard it, sir, but 
there's been a great naval battle in the North Sea 
and the British Fleet has met with an awful dis- 
aster." With correspondents kept out of the area 
of hostilities, it is no wonder that by the time reports 
of occurrences reach the persons who send them to 
86 



August 1914 

our newspapers they bear very little relation to the 
events (if any) which have originally generated 
them. War correspondents in Europe to-day seem 
to be able to do little more than sit in friendly for- 
eign capitals and send home little bits of news out 
of the local papers. And if we want a really accu- 
rate and full description of the big battles, especially 
the big naval battles, of the future we shall usually 
have to wait until peace allows combatants to publish 
such books as the Japanese Human Bullets^ describ- 
ing the attack on Port Arthur, and those vivid Rus- 
sian books which told the story of Rozhdestvensky's 
voyage to the China Sea with his mouldy squadron 
and the magnificent and pitiful end of it at 
Tsushima. But of no great modern war will the 
whole truth ever be properly known. Forces work 
over such vast areas that full Information is im- 
possible to collect. 



87 



Mrs. Barclay sees it through 

OVER the turmoil of a world in arms 
There floats a rich indomitable coo . . . 
'Tis Barclay. . . . Though excursions and 
alarms 
Torture the firmament, though JVilhelm II 
In shining armour waits his Waterloo, 
Though on all sides the blood rains down in torrents 
Love's interests still are in safe hands with Florence. 

What though the rest of us are turning tail, 
Assured by those who have a right to speak 

That only Patriotism has a sale? 

She knows Love's drawing-power remains unique; 
Her books need never be postponed a week; 

Sure of her subject, certain of her vogue, 

She has no need to adjourn, much less prorogue. 

Business as usual. Yet who knows, who knows 
Whether she has not chosen the better part. 

Swelling the proud full sail of her great prose 
Still with the gentler zephyrs of the heart. 
Rather than seize an Amazonian dart. 

Leaping into the middle of the fray 

Like certain other poets of the day. 

88 



Mrs. Barclay sees it through 

Has Robert ^Bridges' success with fighting 
Been such as to encourage emulation? 

Or Dr. Watson's " hit them in the Bight "-ing? 
Or the same author's other lucubration 
{Yet one more blow for a disthressful nation) 

In which, dead gravelled for a rhyme for " Ireland," 

He struggled out with " motherland and sir eland "? 

Did even the voice from Rudyard Kipling's shelf 
Say anything it had not said before? 

And was not Stephen Phillips just himself? 
And was not Newbolt's effort on the war 
Distinctly less effective than of yore? 

And would not German shrapnel in the leg be 

Less lacerating than the verse of Begbie? 

When the Muse seized me, in this manner, by 
the hair, it was three o'clock in the morning, and 
I had just finished the new novel by the author 
of The Rosary. Had It been earlier I should have 
written more. But next day the mouse of inspira- 
tion had fled to Its hole; the spell of the book had 
been dissipated; my vision had faded Into the light 
of common day; and I resumed my consideration of 
the position of Przemysl, a place of which, until 
this week, I had never heard. But what a fascina- 
tion the book exercised while one was reading It! 
I can well understand why Mrs. Barclay commands 
a greater audience than perhaps any other living 
writer. She can beat the basilisk at Its own game. 

89 



Books in General 

The reader is swept away with a rush of strong 
emotion at the very start. A tall, reticent, bronzed 
man arrives by the boat train at Charing Cross. 
Thrown over by a woman, he has been abroad for 
ten years, nursing his grief and creating a reputation 
as a novelist. No sooner does he get to the station 
than he extracts from the coy bookstall clerk a con- 
fession that to him the books of Rodney Steele are 
the best in the world. Lump in the throat number 
one; and a sovereign in the pocket of the clerk. 
Steele leaves the station to drive to a flat a friend has 
left him. Oh, the fragrance and glitter of dear old 
smoky London ! Oh, the beauty of the Queen Vic- 
toria Memorial ! 

" Mysterious through the gloom, he saw the na- 
tion's fine memorial to a deathless memory. The 
gush of green waters, the golden figure at the sum- 
mit, needed sunlight for their better seeing. But 
clear through the orange darkness gleamed the white 
marble majesty of England's Great Queen. 

" Rodney Steele lifted his hand in reverent salute 
as he passed. . . . 

" ' Lest we forget! ' quoted Rodney Steele as he 
looked at the majestic marble figure, throned outside 
the palace above the rushing waters. ' Yet — could 
we, who really remember, ever forget? ' " 

The rest of the book tells how he was wooed 
and won by his old love, now a widow. She had 
90 



Mrs. Barclay sees it through 

deserted him under a misapprehension and was re- 
solved to recover him. She therefore took the next 
flat to his — or rather to her brother's, which Steele 
was occupying. She had heard that owing to a 
change of telephone numbers her brother was con- 
stantly being rung up by mistake for a Hospital. 
One night therefore Steele was rung up and a Kind 
Voice asked for the Matron. The voice reminded 
him of Madge. He began to feel so lonely that 
he willed, with all his will, that the unknown Kind 
Voice should ring him up again. 

" ' Speak to me again,' he said, ' you, you spoke to 
me last night. Speak to me again. What wait I 
for? I wait for you! Just now — in my utter 
loneliness, in my empty solitude — I wait for 
you.' . . . 

" The distant clock slowly chimed a quarter past 
the hour of ten; and — as that sound died away — 
the bell of the telephone rang." 

This time he made the Kind Voice promise to 
ring him up nightly in order to console him in his 
loneliness. The Kind Voice consented. Ultimately 
on the telephone they discussed (he not revealing his 
identity or knowing hers) his novels. This is the 
kind of thing they say over the telephone : 

" * The thing of first importance is to uplift your 
readers; to raise their ideals; to leave them with a 

91 



Books in General 

sense of hopefulness, which shall arouse within them 
a brave optimism such as inspired Browning's oft- 
quoted noble lines.' " 

When finally he confesses to the Kind Voice that 
his life has been ruined by a girl with whom he is 
still in love, Madge thinks the time ripe for an ap- 
pointment. They meet. He finds that the Kind 
Voice has been Madge all the time and he steels his 
breast against the woman who has added deception 
to her previous crime. But her " gracious grace- 
fulness " and other qualities win In the end, and we 
finish at Christmas with Herald Angels and wedding- 
bells. 

Mrs. Barclay certainly has skill. Nobody else 
can write a silly story half so well as she. Her 
English is fluent and vivid, although loose; her 
humour Is genuine If not subtle; and she handles 
her dialogue, such as It is, very cleverly. But, above 
all, she knows how to serve out the glamour and 
the pathos with a ladle. The hero of this book is 
as generous as he is clever. He can conjure; he can 
make seagulls settle on his shoulder; and he does 
kind actions to widows. There are also an heroic 
ex-soldier who saved a man's life at Splon Kop; a 
bishop's window brimming over with love and remi- 
niscences; and an honest, stupid Englishman with no 
thoughts of self. The only bad character dies, and 
the end Is a paean of joy. As long as she can keep 
92 



Mrs. Barclay sees it through 

this up Mrs. Barclay will never lose her hold. In 
spite of the war, this book, I should think, will sell 
in millions and millions. 

Vorwdrts reports that Dr. Ludwig Frank, a mem- 
ber of the Reichstag, has been killed in battle near 
Luneville. Dr. Frank, who sat for Mannheim, was 
one of the leaders of the Southern Revisionists. I 
had tea with him at the Reichstag last May. He 
took me into the Strangers' Gallery of the House, 
where I heard Dr. Liebknecht makes one of his anti- 
armament speeches, the one in which he incidentally 
accused a Prussian general of negotiating sales of 
decorations. It seems very remote now. Dr. 
Frank was barrister; a big Jew with a heavy, hand- 
some face — sallow skin, aquiline nose, black mous- 
tache, strong chin, dominating eyes. His romantic 
air — he was supposed to resemble Lassalle — made 
him very popular in the rich Jewish salons of Berlin. 
He was a strong man, and one would have said an 
ambitious one. But a middle-class man who enters 
the German Socialist Party sacrifices so much that 
he ipso facto clears himself of the suspicion of mere 
ambition. 



93 



A Topic of Standing Interest 

THE Oxford University Press has just is- 
sued a beautiful little edition of Erasmus's 
Praise of Folly, with a good reproduction 
of Quentin Matsys' portrait of Erasmus as a front- 
ispiece. The last edition of the Encomium Moria 
with which I am familiar is that issued in 1887 by the 
firm of Hamilton, Adams. It had a binding which 
did not please, but contained Holbein's interesting 
illustrations. Whether any considerable sale of the 
book is likely nowadays I very much doubt. Eras- 
mus's humour was an improvement on mediaeval hu- 
mour, which, except in a few cases, cannot make a 
modern man laugh save sometimes through the 
brazenness of its indecency. Erasmus was a child 
of the Renaissance, a wit, a scholar, a questioner of 
all things, a man of the world, a revolutionary con- 
formist. But there are long dull passages in his 
most famous book, and many remarks that seemed 
most daring to the men of his own time are to us 
platitudinous; whilst he often labours some obvious 
joke in the worst mediaeval way. 

At the same time, any one who cares to go through 
the book will find occasional amusement. Erasmus 
94 



A Topic of Standing Interest 

had a mild theory of the satirist's rights. " Wits," 
said he, " have always been allowed this privilege, 
that they might be smart upon any transactions of 
life, if so be their liberty did not extend to railing " ; 
and he disclaimed a desire to imitate Juvenal by 
" raking into the sink of vices to procure a laughter." 
With these qualifications, he let out all around him 
with some vigour. The personification of Folly is 
rather feebly sustained, though the character is pleas- 
antly introduced with the sentence: " I was born 
neither in the floating Delos nor on the frothy sea, 
nor in any of the privacies where too forward moth- 
ers are wont to retire for undiscovered delivery." 
But the obiter dicta on various classes of men who 
have often been the butts of satirists since his day 
are still entertaining and must in his own time have 
been shocking. He refers to priests as " wisely fore- 
seeing that the people, like cows, which never give 
down their milk so well as when they are gently 
stroked, would part with less if they knew more, 
their bounty proceeding only from a mistake of 
charity." He speaks of " The Carthusians, which 
order alone keeps honesty and piety among them, 
but really keeps them so close that nobody ever yet 
could see them," and he is especially down on the 
scholastic theologians. Sterne, it will be remem- 
bered, described a dispute " as to whether God could 
make a nose as big as the steeple of Strasburg." 
This is scarcely a caricature of the kind of discussion 
ridiculed by Erasmus : 

95 



Books in General 

" Whether this proposition is possible to be true; 
that the first person of the Trinity hated the second? 

" Whether God, who took our nature upon him 
in the form of a man, could as well have become a 
woman, a devil, a beast, an herb, or a stone. And 
were it possible that the Godhead had appeared in 
the shape of an inanimate substance, how he then 
should have preached his gospel? Or how have 
been nailed to the cross? Whether if St. Peter had 
celebrated the eucharist at the same time our Saviour 
was hanging on the cross, the consecrated bread 
would have been transubstantiated into the same 
body that remained on the tree? " 

Word-spinning he detested, and he refers the 
Nominalists, the Realists, the Thomists, the Albert- 
ists, the Scotists, etc., to the primitive disciples who 
were " well acquainted with the Virgin Mary, yet 
none of them undertook to prove that she was pre- 
served immaculate from original sin." 

" The disciples baptized all nations, and yet never 
taught what was the formal, material, efficient, and 
final cause of baptism, and certainly never dreamt of 
distinguishing between a delible and an indelible 
character in this sacrament." 

Chaucer, with his observations about relics and 
" piggss bones," and the novelists who never hesi- 
tated to put friars in the most ignominious positions 
96 



A Topic of Standing Interest 

(e. g. in chimneys and under tables) had made sport 
of the clergy, but Erasmus's particular method of 
battering current theology had not been so devastat- 
ingly employed since Lucian. He showed, like Rab- 
elais, that it is possible to reconcile the profession 
of Christianity with something of what a recent 
writer calls " the old Voltairean love of humanity." 

Erasmus made the familiar sport of lawyers and 
pedantic critics. He would have agreed with 
Sterne : " Of all the cants which are canted in this 
canting world — though the cant of hypocrites may 
be the worst — the cant of crticism is the most tor- 
menting." " When any of them," he says, 

*' has found out who was the mother of Anchises, 
or has lighted upon some old unusual word, such 
as bubsequa, bovinator, manticulator, or other like 
obsolete cramp terms, or can, after a great deal 
of poring, spell out the inscription of some battered 
monument: Lord! what joy, what triumph, what 
congratulating their success, as if they had con- 
quered Africa, or taken Babylon the Great! " 

It was for such people's benefit that he must have 
made his irritating final remark: " I hate a hearer 
that will carry anything away with him." 

Erasmus was the mildest of the famous satirists, 
but he has his place In the great succession, though 

97 



Books in General 

his works cannot now compete for readableness with 
those of Lucian, Rabelais, Swift, Sterne, and Vol- 
taire. Satirists have usually been considerable 
plagiarists, and The Praise of Folly has an impor- 
tant historical place in the development of this kind 
of literature. Richard Burton cribbed a good deal 
from it, in spite of his own drastic remark about 
persons who " lard their lean bookes with fat of 
others' workes " and his question: " If that severe 
doom of Synesius be true it is a greater offence to 
steal dead men's labours than their cloaths, what 
shall become of most writers? " But Burton has an 
account on the other side, for Sterne later on re- 
printed chunks of his work almost literally without 
any acknowledgement whatever. 

The new Oxford edition gives a modernized re- 
print of the Caroline Version by John Wilson. In 
the introduction Mrs. P. S. Allen gives some interest- 
ing bibliographical particulars. Over forty editions 
of the Encomium Moria were published in the au- 
thor's lifetime; within forty years of its first Latin 
Issue French, Italian, and English translations had 
been published; and later versions have appeared 
in (amongst other languages) Swedish, Czech, Pol- 
ish, and Modern Greek. 



98 



Was Cromwell an Alligator? 

SOME people — who at least avoid the error 
of ascribing the invention to Steele or Addi- 
son — say that Abraham Cowley was the Fa- 
ther of the English Essay. It might alternatively 
be suggested that Q. Horatius Flaccus was one of its 
parents and Montaigne the other; Bacon having, so 
to speak, a watching brief at the birth. But the 
other statement is true in a sense : for though in 
patches Bacon (and Burton) anticipated the tone 
and method of that type of writing which was 
brought to its fullest perfection by Charles Lamb, 
Cowley was the man who fixed the type. His essays 
have just been republished in a beautiful little edition 
of the Collected Prose Works, issued by the Oxford 
University Press, and edited by Mr. A. B. Gough. 
Mr. Gough is a most painstaking editor, and his 
notes are abnormally full. They are so full that one 
feels that most people who are likely to acquire such 
a book will find nine-tenths of them unnecessary; but 
one ought not to grumble at that, since they have 
the complementary advantage of always supplying 
information when one looks for it. 

The edition is especially to be welcomed as there 
are many persons capable of appreciating Cowley 

99 



Books in General 

who have never come into contact with him. " Who 
now reads Cowley?" Pope asked in 1737; if the 
question were repeated to-day you certainly would 
not get a forest of hands raised, even in an audience 
replete with pince-nez and bulging brows. It was 
Cowley's misfortune, as it was his ambition, to be 
known in his own days as one of the greatest poets 
of his time; when men discovered that he was not 
that, they at once concluded that he was nothing else. 
Not that his poems are as negligible as some critics 
assert; his mere skill and neatness make him 
worth reading. Even if he had, as Mr. Gough 
remarks, " too little passion and spontaneity to be 
a great lyric poet," he was at any rate a good metrist 
and a most admirable phrasemaker. But his prose 
writings are certainly superior to the others; and this 
is true not only of the Essays. His Vision Concern- 
ing Oliver Cromwell^ for example, is full of witty 
and whimsical things. Occasionally he employs very 
drastic language, as when he refers to the Protector 
as an " alligator " and when he abuses him for medi- 
tating the calling in of the Jews. This is how Cow- 
ley disports himself. The italics are mine : 

" From which he was rebuked by the universal 
outcry of the Divines, and even of the Citizens 
too, who took it ill that a considerable number at 
least among themselves were not thought Jews 
enough by their own Herod. And for this design, 
they say, he invented ... to sell St. Pauls to them 
100 



Was Cromwell an Alligator 

for a synagogue, if their purses and devotions could 
have reacht to the purchase. And this indeed if he 
had done onely to reward that Nation which had 
given the first noble example of crucifying their 
King, it might have had some appearance of grati- 
tude, but he did it onely for love of their Mammon; 
and would have sold afterwards for as much more 
St. Peters (even at his own Westminster) to the 
Turks for a Mosquito [Mosque]. Such was his 
extraordinary Piety to God, that he desired he might 
be worshipped in all manners, excepting only that 
heathenish way of the Common Prayer Book." 

But this strong language is not the strong language 
of a man whose breast is a burning fiery furnace; it 
is the invective of a man who is amused by his op- 
ponents and who regards them chiefly as pegs for 
cunning sentences. His hard words would certainly 
have broken no bones; and one can even imagine 
that, in the secrecy of their chambers, the Puritans 
themselves — at all events, the less ironsided of 
them — may have shaken their sides over his char- 
acter-sketch of the man whom they doubtless re- 
ferred to in public as " our great leader." 

But if such qualities are defects when a man is 
writing political tracts or attempting the higher 
flights of poetry, they are invaluable to him if he is 
writing essays. Cowley's Essays — and his Pre- 
faces are as good — are most delightful, and they 
have as personal a turn as Lamb's. They all, vir- 

lOI 



Books in General 

tually, have one text: the Sabine Farm text; the re- 
tired Urbs in Rure text. They speak of the coun- 
try's charms in the ex-townsman's way; they gibe at 
the turmoil and press of cities in a manner which 
attests a still lively interest in these contemptible 
things; they praise the pleasures of horticulture, sol- 
itary meditation, and a Kempis's " little book in a 
corner." Their learning is lightly worn; their lan- 
guage natural; their arguments not so serious as to 
stand in the way of any jest that offers itself; and 
many passages in them might almost as well have 
been written in 1720 or 1820 as in 1660. These, 
for instance: 

" There is no saying shocks me so much as that 
which I hear often that a man does not know how 
to pass his Time. 'Twould have been but ill spoken 
by Methusalem in the nine hundred sixty ninth year 
of his Life. 

*' I have been drawn twice or thrice by company 
to go to Bedlam, and have seen others very much 
delighted with the fantastical extravagancie of so 
many various madnesses, which upon me wrought 
so contrary an effect, that I always returned, not 
only melancholy, but e'en sick with the sight. My 
compassion there was perhaps too tender, for I meet 
a thousand Madmen abroad, without any perturba- 
tion; though, to weigh the matter justly, the total 
loss of Reason is less deplorable than the total dep- 
ravation of it. 
102 



Was Cromwell an Alligator 

*' I thought when I went first to dwell in the 
country, that without doubt I should have met there 
with the simplicity of the old Poetical Golden Age; 
I thought to have found no inhabitants there, but 
such as the Shepherds of Sir Phil. Sydney in Arcadia, 
or of Monsieur d'Urfe upon the Banks of Lignon; 
and began to consider with myself, which way I 
might recommend no less to Posterity the Happiness 
and Innocence of the Men of Chertsea; but to con- 
fess the truth, I perceived quickly, by infallible dem- 
onstrations, that I was still in Old England. 

" The civilest, methinks, of all Nations, are those 
whom we account the most barbarous. There is 
some moderation and good Nature in the Toupin- 
amhaltians who eat no men but their Enemies, whilst 
we learned and polite and Christian Europeans, like 
as many Pikes or Sharks prey upon everything 
we can swallow." 

The last sentence reads, perhaps, more like a cer- 
tain living writer than like, say, Charles Lamb. 

The best of Cowley's Essays are Of My Self 
and Of Greatness. I have no room to quote them 
at length. The first — in which he is writing of 
poetry and of his childhood's memories — is more 
full of feeling than Is usual with him. The other 
Is one of the most picturesque pieces of light mor- 
alizing In the language, full of what we all call the 
Playful Irony of the Gentle Ella, as In sentences 

103 



Books in General 

like: " The Ancient Roman Emperours, who had the 
Riches of the whole world for their Revenue, had 
wherewithal to live (one would have thought) pretty 
well at ease, and to have been exempt from the pres- 
sures of extream Poverty"; and it describes the 
pleasures of littleness most alluringly. But some- 
how, in spite of his assertions, one never quite be- 
lieves in the genuineness of his middle-aged prefer- 
ence for " Prettiness," as against " Majestical 
Beauty." One suspects the existence in him of a 
disappointed ambition, a hankering after action, 
which frequently afflict men who are constitutionally 
fitted for nothing but looking on and making charm- 
ing comments. But he had certainly been very 
badly treated by the Stuart family, which he had 
faithfully served. The Restoration gave him 
neither employment nor money. It gave him, how- 
ever, a very fine funeral. Evelyn says that his coffin 
was followed to the Abbey by a hundred noblemen's 
coaches and large numbers of wits, bishops, and 
clergymen. 



104 



The Depressed Philanthropist 

I DO not see why any one but myself should be 
interested in the mere fact that, except in the 
way of casual reference, I have always avoided 
writing a line about Mr. John Galsworthy. But as 
one's feelings commonly typify those of some section 
or other of one's fellows it may be relevant to one's 
purpose. I frequently begin writing something 
about Mr. Galsworthy and then tear it up. I con- 
stantly feel like abusing him, and am then checked by 
the thought that after all he is too good a man to 
go for. He is a sensitive and humane man of very 
great intelligence. He is a conscientious writer and 
an acute observer. He has a great respect for truth 
and a desire to state it at all costs. He detests pet- 
tinesses, hypocrisies, and shams. On almost every 
issue that might arise I am sure I should find myself 
voting on the same side as he, though perhaps we 
might differ in our views of the relative importance 
to be attached to the problem of World Peace and 
that of the hardships inflicted by mandkind on ants, 
wasps, and bees. And yet as I read his books I 
feel as if I were in some cheerless seaside lodging- 
house on a wet day. 

I have just been reading his new miscellany The 
Little Man. The book does not show his qualities 

105 



Books in General 

at their best, but it shows his defects at their worst. 
The principal contents are The Little Man and 
Studies in Extravagance. The first is a short play- 
showing how a German, an American full of altruis- 
tic platitudes, and two self-contained and " proper " 
English people shrink in the most selfish and cow- 
ardly way from a forlorn baby suspected (falsely, of 
course, for the sake of the extra irony) of typhus. 
The " studies " are examinations of various " types " 
such as " The Artist," " The Plain Man," " The 
Housewife," " The Preceptor," and " The Latest 
Thing." And there is none of them good — no, 
not one. Mr. Max Beerbohm once did a cartoon 
of Mr. Galsworthy Looking upon Life and Finding 
it Foul, Life being represented as a fat and ferocious 
goblin with horns, a forked tail, and teeth like a 
wild boar's. It was just a little wrong. Mr. Gals- 
worthy's vision should not have had so much of the 
positive about it. He does not find Life vigorously 
diabolical, but meanly cruel and pallidly contemp- 
tible. Many great men have been gloomy or pessi- 
mistic. Mr. Hardy is not exactly a merry grig, 
Schopenhauer was consistenly disgruntled, and the 
man who would look for joie de vivre in Leopardi 
would look in vain. And as Mr. Galsworthy 
suggests himself — it is a commonplace — it is 
often the duty of a serious contemporary writer 
to be horrifying, unpleasant, and shocking. The 
regeneration of mankind — to continue the com- 
monplace — is not possible if we hold the view 
io6 



The Depressed Philanthropist 

that things may be done that may not be dis- 
cussed, and that the faihngs of man and the 
diseases of society should, as far as possible, 
be stowed away in the cupboard, where the 
skeletons are. What is wrong with Mr. Gals- 
worthy is that one cannot quite believe him. One 
suspects him of cooking the evidence. One does not 
mind a man presenting a black view of life if (a) 
he is temperamentally inclined to it and can be mel- 
ancholy with a certain gusto, or (b) if, being a pro- 
fessed realist, he appears to have taken cognizance 
of every aspect that has presented itself to him. 
But Mr. Galsworthy presents so one-sided a case 
that we at once suspect his bona fides and react 
against his views. It would be unfair to classify 
him with that school of novelists who give their 
books titles like Dull Monotony and live up to their 
titles by giving a photographic reproduction of an in- 
tolerable tedium peculiar to, and comprehensible by, 
the households which they themselves afflict. He 
usually escapes being thoroughly boring partly be- 
cause of his gift for occasionally happy and incisive 
phrase and partly because here and there, behind the 
grey brow of the dejected Hanging Judge, one 
catches a gleam of something more exhilarating than 
his expressed sentiments. But he is often very 
nearly dull, all the same : for his realism is often 
bogus. He starts with an intention to paint a cari- 
cature in greys, and a caricature which is not amus- 
ing. Even in his very well-made plays the char- 

107 



Books in General 

acters are not, to my mind, usually Interesting in 
themselves. One does not believe in them as per- 
sons. They are just a set of types, as stagy and 
unreal as the old stage figures of melodrama, 
though they are called charwomen, clerks, magis- 
trates, and company directors instead of being called 
Irishmen, highwaymen, and wicked baronets. His 
plays argue cases, but they do not present hfe as 
we know it. I find the same sort of unreality about 
his prose; and, since the unreality takes the form of 
making mankind look utterly paltry and uninterest- 
ing, one wonders why on earth a man who has such 
an opinion of it bothers about it at all. 

So in The Little Man and in these studies. All 
these average people do not get a dog's chance; we 
have all sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 
but we really are not quite so dull, feeble, and silly 
as all this. Some characteristics — as those of the 
Plain Man — are very cleverly recorded, but the 
whole of the man is not here, nor even the most im- 
portant parts of him. As an illustration of Mr, 
Galsworthy's pseudo-realistic method take him on 
the ground most favourable to him — that of the 
beef-and-whisky-fed sportsman : 

" What led to him was anything that ministered 
to the coatings of the stomach and the thickness of 
the skin ... to be ' hard ' was his ambition, and 
he moved through life hitting things, especially 
io8 



The Depressed Philanthropist 

balls — whether they reposed on little inverted tubs 
of sand or moved swiftly towards him, he almost al- 
ways hit them, and told people how he did it after- 
wards. He hit things, too, at a distance, through 
a tube, with a certain noise. . . ." 

Now, apart from the fact that a full and accurate 
description of a sportsman would put in many things 
Mr. Galsworthy leaves out (e. g. some indication 
that he was a human being, as we know the species) , 
this is not good, though it is superficially plausible 
description, even so far as it goes. The plain state- 
ment that the gentleman played golf and cricket and 
shot a good deal would convey a better idea of him 
than this specious circumlocution. To say that a 
man is smoking a cigarette positively contains a 
greater measure of suggestion than to say that he is 
inhaling grey fumes through a cylinder of paper 
filled with dried herbs. Much of Mr. Galsworthy's 
attack upon all kinds of men and women, self-centred 
authors, idealists who oppress their wives, worldly 
women who have never found their souls, cultured 
people who chase the new, and Philistines who run 
away from the new, has the same sort of defect. 
It is really " guying " which passes for photography 
merely because it is heavy-footed and unamusing. I 
object to Mr. Galsworthy's ostensible view of life 
partly because I don't believe he takes it, and partly 
because if he did I should think it an absurdly 
unjust view. At heart a humanitarian, he has got 

109 



Books in General 

into a dismal and costive kind of literary method 
which makes him look like a fretful and dyspeptic 
man who curls his discontented nostrils at life as 
though it were an unpleasing smell. As Ibsen used 
so often to remark, there is a great deal wrong with 
the drains; but after all there are other parts of the 
edifice. 



no 



A Polyphloisboisterous Critic 

I REMEMBER — that is to say, I wish I re- 
membered, for I have forgotten most of it — 
a poem that I used to recite at my mother's 
knee. Its subject was an antediluvian man of ses- 
quipedalian height, who let out the blood of an ich- 
thyosaurus with a polyphloisboisterous shout; and 
its claim to attention was a plethora of polysyllables 
very embarrassing to an infant, and indeed to any, 
tongue. It was of that poem that I was reminded 
whilst reading European Dramatists, by Archibald 
Henderson. 

Mr. Henderson, an American professor, is not a 
stranger to the British public. It was he who pro- 
duced, a few years ago, a biographical study of Mr. 
Bernard Shaw so vast that a single copy might well 
have served — were not Mr. Shaw still happily with 
us — as Mr. Shaw's tombstone. The work, indeed 
(to use the phrase Mr. Henderson himself applies 
to a play of Strindberg's) , was "colossal in its in- 
commensurability." It was the kind of book one 
had thought could only be produced by a large com- 
mittee of Chinese scholars; and although it did not 
lead one to respect the author's powers of judging 
the relative importance of his various facts, it at 

III 



Books in General 

least compelled one to admire his colossal energy and 
his incommensurable supply of these facts. From 
European Dramatists one gets precisely the same 
feeling. Parts of the book have appeared in jour- 
nals published in Boston and in Berlin, in Stuttgart 
and in Stockholm, in Helsingfors, Paris, New York, 
and Ghent. And one may be sure that Mr. Hen- 
derson could have talked to the editors of all these 
papers and beaten all of them hollow in knowledge 
of the modern literature of their respective countries. 
The actual subjects of his papers are familiar 
enough: Strindberg, Ibsen, Shaw, Maeterlinck, Gran- 
ville Barker, and Wilde. But in discussing them he 
shows an amazing acquaintance with everybody who 
has recently written anything in any country. He 
can refer you to the December 19 13 issue of the 
Przemysl Review; he can tell you what the Servian 
critic, Ivan Peckitch, thinks of the Finnish poet, 
D. D. Bilius. He knows all about everything, 
though one is not quite sure that he knows anything 
else. But what chiefly pleases one about him is not 
so much what he says as the charming way he says 
it. Like Hudibras, he cannot ope his mouth but 
out there flies a trope. Everything happens with 
him in metaphors; people are always digging into 
soils, moulding things In fires or clothing them In 
vestures. And above all he is polysyllabic and ro- 
tund of speech. 

He begins well with Strindberg, of whose first 
112 



A Polyphloisboisterous Critic 

married years he observes that they " were undoubt- 
edly happy — certainly in the passional sense, if not 
in the restful consciousness of hallowed union." 
" In 1886," he proceeds, " Strindberg began to be 
obsessed with the monomania of animadversion 
against the female sex." Later, " goaded by titanic 
ambition, he cast off the shackles of provinciality for 
the freedom of cosmopolitanism " — i. e. he trav- 
elled. Ibsen and Strindberg were " so antipodal in 
temperament, yet so cognate in the faculties of in- 
tuitive perception and searching introspectiveness." 
One of Strindberg's works blurs the vision of the 
average spectator, '' with its kinetoscopic hetero- 
geneity of spiritual films " : Peer Gynt (on the other 
hand, shall I say?) stood for " the disciplinary bank- 
ruptcy of laxity." " Concretizes " and " inscena- 
tion " are the kind of words he rejoices in, but per- 
haps two or three longer extracts will better illus- 
trate the quality of his style : 

" To peep into the workshop of the great master's 
brain and assist at the precise balancing of the argu- 
ments pro and con, to observe how an idea first finds 
lodgment in the brain, and to note the gradual sym- 
metrical accretion of the fundamental nuclei for the 
final creation — this is a privilege that has perhaps 
[iic] never fully been realized by an observer. 

" America is young and hopeful, at least; it is not 
peopled, we are confidently assured, with soul-sick 
tragedians mouthing their futile protests against the 

113 



Books in General 

iron vice of environment, the ineradicable scar of 
heredity, the fell clutch of circumstance. 

" Yet the reiterant ejaculations, the hyper-ethereal 
imaginings of the symbolist manner, are the symp- 
toms of a tentative talent, not of an authoritative 
art." 

I don't think Professor Henderson's remarks are 
ever quite meaningless, but I suspect that the most 
elephantine of them, if reduced to essentials, would 
be as commonplace as his more comprehensible state- 
ments that " Social criticism is the sign manual of 
the age," and that " the emancipation of woman, in 
the completest sense, is on the way " — which last 
gets a whole paragraph to itself. But it is pleasant 
to read it all; to see " Ibsen, Pinero, or Phillips" 
thus bracketed; to learn that Wilde's father was 
also " the father of modern otology," and to be 
told that Maeterlinck's " eternal prayer " is, " Oh, 
that this too, too solid flesh would melt " ! That is, 
on page 203 ; but the effect is somewhat marred by 
the fact that precisely the same " cry " has been, 
on page 37, attributed to Strindberg. Personally I 
plump for Maeterlinck. 



114 



*' Another Century, and 
then ..." 



THERE is a certain sort of dull criticism 
which Dr. Johnson admirably stigmatized 
when he said that " there is no great merit 
in telling how many plays have ghosts in them and 
how this ghost is better than that." A great deal 
of American (not to speak of German) academic 
criticism belongs to this category; and especially 
those theses which are written by postgraduate stud- 
ents and candidates for the doctor's degree. These 
persons, when they are not exhuming dead reputa- 
tions from well-deserved sepulchres, show an un- 
canny ingenuity in inventing original classifications 
and instituting unnecessary comparisons. But now 
and again such students manage to produce some en- 
lightening piece of " research " work, and The 
French Revolution and the English Novel (Put- 
nams) is one of the best of its kind. It is by Allene 
Gregory; and as I cannot tell from the name whether 
she is a gentleman or a lady, I shall call him Miss. 

" This study in the tendenz novel was begun with 
the idea of paralleling Dr. Hancock's book. The 
French Revolution and the English Poets." That 

115 



Books in General 

is the first sentence of the preface, and It has a strictly 
academic flavour about it. The book is a " scien- 
tific " treatise; it would not have been written, so to 
say, either by a French Revolutionary or by an Eng- 
lish novelist. If it dealt with the purely literary 
merits, which are few, of its subjects, it would be a 
useless sort of book. But its real purpose is to sup- 
ply a chapter to the history of ideas, and especially 
Liberal political and social ideas. Many people 
talk as though they thought that the novel which 
canvasses the " problems " of sex, property, and re- 
ligion were an invention of the last thirty years; and 
many others are under the impression that Charles 
Dickens was the first person to use fiction — though 
not, of course, the first person to employ fictions — 
for the promotion of legislation. Books about God- 
win and Mary Wollstonecraft are occasionally writ- 
ten; and quite recently Thomas Holcroft, one of the 
chief of our Revolutionary novelists, was given con- 
siderable notice in Mr. Brailsford's excellent little 
book in the Home University Library. But, as far 
as my experience goes, there seem to be very few 
who know that England produced a century ago a 
whole group of novelists whose principal aim was 
not to " tell a straightforward story " or make the 
flesh creep, but to blow up the foundations of so- 
ciety with the gunpowder in the jam. 

Miss Gregory's book is very comprehensive. 
Her principal figures are Holcroft, Godwin, and 
ii6 



''Another Century, and then . . ." 

Robert Bage; and she gives synopses of all their 
novels, with extracts illustrating their doctrines, 
Holcroft, one of the most lovable figures in the his- 
tory of English democracy, was the sort of man who 
is regarded as an obscure crank in his lifetime, then 
forgotten for a time, and ultimately recognized as a 
person of historical importance. He lived a long 
life, and harmed nobody in the course of it. As a 
stable-boy in a racing stable he read Addison, Bun- 
yan, and Swift (whose tribute to the Houyhnhnms 
must have had a local colour for him) ; he was after- 
wards a strolling actor, a hack writer, translator, 
novelist, and playwright, one of his plays being 
The Road to Ruin. When the Society for Consti- 
tutional Reformation was raided Holcroft was ar- 
rested with Thomas Hardy and Home Tooke, and 
it was alleged against him, as justification for a 
charge of high treason, that he had extolled moral 
as against physical force. His associates being ac- 
quitted, he was never brought to trial : there comes 
a point at which even a Government begins to feel 
it is making an ass of itself. Holcroft's courage 
never weakened " when Wordsworth, Coleridge, 
Southey, and even Blake had recanted, and Godwin 
and Paine had fallen silent, and all the world seemed 
to have forgotten its vision of democracy." He 
himself stated in terms: "Whenever I have under- 
taken to write a novel I have proposed to myself a 
specific moral purpose." His best novels are Hugh 
Trevor and Anna Si, Ives, In the latter the hero, 

117 



Books in General 

Frank Henley, who shocks the orthodox by taking 
service rather than self-interest as his guiding prin- 
ciple, remarks; 

" Let men look around and deny if they can that 
the present wretched system of each providing for 
himself instead of the whole for the whole does not 
inspire suspicion, fear, and hatred. Well, well 1 — 
another century, and then . . ." 

Just a century has passed. 

Of Godwin's novels Caleb Williams is the only 
one that is at all read nowadays. In spite of its 
impossibilities of character and action, it is a very 
good tract, especially where it deals with the prison 
system. Miss Gregory's extracts from Caleb Will- 
iams might have been more profuse; but she gives 
interesting accounts of St. Leon and Fleetwood. In 
the first of these a gentleman who possesses the phi- 
losopher's stone breaks into long reflections on 
" gold versus actual wealth " ; in the other there are 
eloquent passages about the horrors of child-slavery 
in factories which anticipate the factory reports of a 
generation later, and which were so much in ad- 
vance of their time that they still hold good in ref- 
erence to certain of the States of America. God- 
win saw the whole thing very clearly: the pale, 
emaciated child given the free man's right of selling 
his labour at his own price in the open market and, 
ii8 



"Another Century, and then . . ." 

as Godwin put it, able to earn salt to his bread at 
four, but unable to earn bread to his salt at forty. 
The placid Bage's novels were admired by Walter 
Scott. The most original is Hermsprong, or Man 
as he is not, the hero of which — who enters civilized 
society after being brought up among the Red Indi- 
ans, and quails at the change — criticizes institutions 
with something of the tone of the versatile Mr. Smi- 
lash in An Unsocial Socialist. 

Shelley's Zastrozzi and St. Irvyne are only in- 
teresting, if interesting at all, because they were writ- 
ten by their author. Miss Gregory ploughs through 
them, and also through the novels of Charlotte 
Smith, Mrs. Inchbald, and Mrs. Opie. She has a 
very interesting chapter on Mary Wollstonecraft and 
the early Women's Rights authors. I find most al- 
luring the bare mention made of a certain Ann 
Plumptre, a novelist of whom I had never previously 
heard, who admired Napoleon enthusiastically. In 
1810, according to Crabb Robinson, 

" she declared she would welcome him if he Invaded 
England because he would do away with aristocracy 
and give the country a better government." 

Finally Miss Gregory has given space to the anti- 
revolutionary novelists, especially George Walker 
and Charles Lucas, of The Infernal Quixote. Ridi- 
cule of visionaries and demagogues through the me- 

119 



Books in General 

dium of novels was a recognized sport then as now; 
and Lucas instituted an elaborate comparison be- 
tween political and religious revivalists. A good 
bibliography rounds off a very laudable compilation 
which should interest all persons of subversive views 
and direct the reading of the curious into some very 
agreeable channels. 



120 



Herrick 

MR. F. W. MOORMAN has edited for the 
Oxford Press a new edition of Herrick, 
which should supersede all its predeces- 
sors. There is very little editorial matter; Mr. 
Moorman has already written a Life, and his intro- 
duction and notes have a purely textual reference. 
The text, which is as satisfactory a one as we are 
likely to get, is based upon a collation of various 
divergent copies of the first edition; for Herrick ap- 
pears to have hung about the printer's making altera- 
tions whilst the sheets were going through the press. 
And a full list Is given of variants which occur in 
other printed copies of some of the poems and in 
MSS., of which the editor records several which 
have not previously been dealt with. 

Any one who regards Herrick as an unsophisti- 
cated warbler pouring forth profuse strains of un- 
premeditated art may study these variants and cor- 
rect himself. Mr. Moorman — I suppose he has 
sufficient reason, though he leaves one to guess what 
it is — assumes that the versions In MSS. and antho- 
logies, etc., including those published after the Hes- 
perides, are all earlier than the versions in the Hes- 
perides. Now and then one is sorry that this should 
be so, as when the presumably earlier 

121 



Books in General 

And night will come when men will swear 
Time has spilt snow upon your haire, 

is changed into 

And time will come when you shall weare 
Such frost and snow upon your haire. 

But almost invariably the changes are improve- 
ments; and they are exceedingly numerous. Some- 
times alterations in almost every line of a poem may 
be studied; sometimes there is a whole series of at- 
tempts at a line; and if we had more of Herrick's 
original MSS. available, we should no doubt find 
every poem a mass of trial trips and deletions. He 
blotted, filed, and pumice-stoned as much as any 
English poet, and he had the most delicate and delib- 
erate sense of all the complex mechanism of verse. 
This rubicund Royalist rector was above all else a 
craftsman and a connoisseur. 

What distinguishes his best — they are so well 
known that I need not quote them — poems from 
his second best is usually that the former have some 
especially taking touch of tenderness. It is never 
very deep; even in an epitaph he is more concerned 
with turning it well than with the, often apocryphal, 
death of the person commemorated. His adora- 
tions and griefs are as light as rose-leaves, but they 
are genuine in their way, and it is rather a slight 
difference in the quality of his emotion than a rela- 

122 



Herrick 

tive superiority of craftsmanship that distinguishes 
his most perfect lyrics. His strongest characteristic, 
one that runs through the whole body of his verse, 
was his intense sensual appreciation of the material 
world. He was a connoisseur in life as in art. His 
admired record of the " liquefaction " of Julia's 
silks is characteristic of him. " O how that glitter- 
ing taketh me ! " he might have said of a thousand 
other things. He looked at colours and felt sur- 
faces hke a connoisseur; he tasted substances like an 
epicure tasting wines. He crushes all the distinctive 
hues and flavours out of flowers and spices, roses and 
primroses and violets, tulips, lilies, marigolds, 
cherryblossoms, virgins' skins, jet, ivory, amber, and 
gums. There is nothing romantic about him, and 
nothing dim; all things are equally vivid and clear, 
no thing is mysteriously vaster than other things. 
The moon and cream are both white — he will com- 
pare his lady's cheek to either indifferently or to both 
in a sentence; he relishes the loveliness of each and 
he drinks each, with exquisite pleasure, out of the 
same sized liqueur glass. Few other writers give 
one so keen a contact with the beauties of the physi- 
cal world. But it is usually their sensuous appeal 
that is registered, sometimes their sentimental ap- 
peal, but never their mystic appeal. Herrick was a 
thoroughgoing pagan. 

His capacity for conveying vivid impressions of 
the physical was not invariably employed upon such 

123 



Books in General 

agreeable objects as daffodils and maidens. His 
sheer virtuosity made him compose those offensive 
epigrams which some bashful editors exclude from 
their collections. It is not to be supposed that he 
really wished to vent his spleen against Lungs, Gryll, 
Clasco, Scobble, Bunce, and his other, presumably 
pseudonymous, butts; though if his efforts in this 
direction got about in his Devonshire village and 
people took them to apply to themselves it is no 
wonder that the natives behaved towards him, as he 
complained, like surly savages. " Upon Batt " is 
one of the mildest of them: 

Batt he gets children, not for love to reare 'em, 
But out of hope his wife might die to beare 'em. 

A more characteristic, but still a mild one, is 
" Upon Lungs ": 

Lungs (as some say) ne'er sits him down to eate 
But that his breath do' s Fly-blow all the meate. 

He tells — I refrain from the grossest ones — of 
another gentleman whose eyes were so sticky in 
the morning that his wife had to lick them open; 
of another whose raw eyes would supply an angler 
with a day's bait; and of another (very parsimon- 
ious) who preserved his nails, warts, and corns In 
boxes to make jelly for his broth. It is not aston- 
ishing that when the " sprightly Spartanesse " ap- 
peared to him In dream she remarked: 
124 



Herrick 

Hence, Remove, 
Herrick thou art too coorse for love. 

But as one goes on through these things one is too 
amused to be disgusted; one wonders what on earth 
the man is going to think of next. And that was the 
idea. He had compressed all the fragrance of the 
spring into short lyrics — how much concentrated 
beastliness could he get into a couplet? He had 
rivalled Horace and Anacreon in one line; could he 
rival Martial in another? You may picture him 
making these things — sitting at a table in the sun 
outside the rectory, quaffing, as was his wont, a social 
tankard with his favourite pig, and working and 
working at these singular concoctions until there 
came the thrill of the artist who knows he has pro- 
duced a perfect cameo. 

His outlook and methods being such, it is not sur- 
prising that when he gave up his " unbaptized 
Rhimes " and took to " Noble Numbers " he was 
comparatively unsuccessful. Quaintness and neat- 
ness do not go far in religious verse, and the con- 
genital materialism of Herrick's imagery sometimes 
produced the most grotesque effects. 

God is all forepart, for we never see 
Any part backward in the Deitie. 

An epigram which might have had some point if 

125 



Books in General 

applied to a man is merely vapid when applied to 
the Deity. And the vapid becomes comic in 

/ crawle, I creep; my Christ I come 
To thee, for curing Balsamum, 

and 

Lord, I confesse, that thou alone are able 
To purifie this my Augean stable; 
Be the Seas water, and the Land all Sope, 
Yet if thy Bloud not wash me, there's no hope. 

Herrick was not an exalted religious poet. But 
it doesn't much matter what he was not; what he was 
is one of the greatest small masters in the history 
of verse. 



126 



The Muse in Liquor 

IN former times men wrote about drinking with- 
out the slightest self-consciousness. Our fore- 
fathers, from Teos to Chertsey, from Green- 
land's icy mountains to India's coral strand, sang the 
praises of what nobody in those days dreamt of call- 
ing alcohol, as they sang the praises of the other 
amenities of life. To Homer " bright wine " was 
as indispensable a commodity as bread: no home 
could be complete without it. If Anacreon and 
Horace were rather more sophisticated about it and 
tasted their liquor with a deliberate and spun-out sen- 
suality, they still had no idea that there was any- 
thing morally questionable about drink. So on- 
wards to mediaeval times. When the Anglo-Saxon 
leech laid it down that if a man has fainted from 
hunger one should 

" pull his locks from him, and wring his ears, and 
twitch his whiskers; when he is better give him some 
bread broken in wine," 

there was no rival school of leeches to jump up and 
protest that to inject alcoholic poisons into a debili- 
tated frame was about the worst thing you could do. 
Drinking in the Middle Ages was unchallengeably 

127 



Books in General 

respectable. " The introduction of wine and viticul- 
ture," says Mr. A. L. Simon in his history of the 
Wine Trade in England, 

" is coeval with the introduction of the Christian 
religion. As the numbers of clergy increased, 
greater supplies of wine were required, so vines were 
planted at home, and a considerable foreign wine 
trade came into being." 

The drinking-songs of the Middle Ages were largely 
composed by theological students, and it was (at 
least I am of that party which maintains that it was) 
an archdeacon of the English Church who wrote one 
of the two best lyrics of the kind that this island has 
produced — that perfect song in which he expresses 
the hope that he shall meet his latter end in a hos- 
telry and that some one should hold a pottle-pot 
before his dying eyes : 

Ut dicant cum venerint angelorum chori 
" Deus sit propitius huic potatori." 

Our other great song has also been attributed to 
an ecclesiastic. Bishop Still. 

But if a modern bishop wrote a song about hot 
whisky, he would get into hot water. Times have 
changed. When a modern English king wants to 
do the popular thing, he takes the pledge; when 
128 



The Muse in Liquor 

Henry III wanted to, he gave his old wine to the 
poor — the gift was not so noble as it sounds, for 
in his day old wine was bad, owing to the lack of 
glass bottles and well-made casks. Bishop Still, 
when he wrote (if he wrote) about the ale-swallow- 
ing capacity of himself and Tib, his wife, was on 
the safe side, for his sovereign lady, Queen Eliza- 
beth, was addicted herself. Her Ministers had a 
job keeping her supplied with beer. When she was 
on one of her royal progresses, the Earl of Leicester 
wrote to Lord Burleigh: 

" There Is not one drop of good drink for her. 
We were fain to send to London and Kenilworth 
and divers other places where ale was; her own 
here was so strong as there was no man able to 
drink it." 

But since that time a question of principle has arisen, 
and the changed attitude of society towards drink 
has been accompanied by a corresponding change in 
the tone of those who write in praise of drink. 
They used to be natural and expository; they are 
now self-conscious and on the defensive. 

I note the transition in a volume (1862) called 
How to Mix Drinks, or The Bon-Fivant's Com- 
panion, by Jerry Thomas, formerly principal bar- 
tender at the Metropolitan Hotel, New York, and 
the Planter's House, St. Louis. It is an ingenious 

129 



Books in General 

book and a suitable companion to its shelf-neighbour, 
The Maltworm's Vade-mecum, a guide to the public- 
houses of early Georgian London. But if Mr. 
Thomas had been a contemporary of his brother 
connoisseur, it would never have occurred to him to 
write a preface apologizing for the mere compilation 
of such a book: 

" Whether it is judicious that mankind should con- 
tinue to indulge in such things, or whether it would 
be wiser to abstain from all enjoyments of that char- 
acter, it is not our province to decide. We leave 
that question to the moral philosopher. We simply 
contend that a relish for ' social drinks ' is universal; 
that those drinks exist in greater variety in the 
United States than in any other country in the world, 
and that he, therefore, who proposes to impart to 
those drinks not only the most palatable but the most 
wholesome characteristics of which they may be 
made susceptible, is a genuine public benefactor." 

You see the uneasiness coming in; the devotee is 
conscious of a disapproving eye. And what was 
perceptible in 1862 is much more marked to-day, 
when a considerable percentage of the population 
looks askance at a man who has been seen coming 
out of a bar, and when most of our priests and half 
our politicians denounce fermented drinks as an in- 
vention of the Devil. The results of this are seen 
in the twentieth-century Bacchanal's writings. He is 
130 



The Muse in Liquor 

on the defensive. He cannot write a mere song in 
praise of drink: his Muse is largely, even mainly, 
concerned with dispraise of the opponents of drink. 
Mr. Belloc and Mr. Chesterton, belauding drinks as 
against beverages, strike an attitude which Anacreon 
simply would not have understood. They cannot lie 
and lap their liquor in dreamy content. Whenever 
they take up a pot of beer they have to march out 
and drink it defiantly in the middle of the Strand. 
It is almost as if they knew they were the champions 
of a lost, though noble, cause; and felt that at any 
moment they might be called upon to Die in the Last 
Tankard. 

This tendency is strongly marked in Mr. Chester- 
ton's volume Wine, Water, and Song. Mr. Ches- 
terton spends half his time in abusing abstemious 
American and English millionaires, tea, cocoa, min- 
eral waters, and grocers — who, lacking the genial 
proclivities of publicans, have never been known 

To crack a bottle of fish sauce 
Or stand a man a cheese. 

But the novelty of tone makes the songs all the 
better: for the old material of drinking-songs was 
getting threadbare. To my thinking, these songs 
— most of them appeared in The Flying Inn, and 
it was a pity that they were omitted from the vol- 
ume of collected Poems recently issued — are 

131 



Books in General 

amongst the finest bibulous songs ever written, 
and some of Mr. Chesterton's very best work. You 
can read them aloud to other people and very seldom 
come across a stilted or obscure phrase which makes 
you feel sheepish to say it. But, more than that, 
Wine and Water, The Good Rich Man, The Song 
against Songs, and the two poems on the English 
Road are the sort of infectiously musical things that 
one learns by heart without knowing one has done it. 

Old Noah he had an ostrich farm and fowls on the 

largest scale. 
He ate his eggs with a ladle in an egg-cup big as a 

pail. 
And the soup he took was Elephant Soup, and the 

fish he took was whale, 
But they all were small to the cellar he took when he 

set out to sail. 
And Noah he often said to his wife when he sat 

down to dine, 
" I don't care where the water goes if it doesn't get 

into the wine." 

Lives there a man with soul so dead that when he 
comes across this or The Road to Roundabout 
(which is about the best of the lot) he does not 
automatically improvise a tune to it and start, ac- 
cording to his ability, singing it? 



132 



£5 Misspent 



ANY one who Is interested in what nobody 
has yet asked us to call the British language 
must have felt apprehensive if he read the 
correspondence recently printed in the Times on the 
subject of a synonym for the word " Colonial." It 
appears that this word is " strongly objected to " in 
the — er — Dominions, and especially in Canada. 
The Central Committee of the Overseas Club there- 
fore started a Missing Word Competition. It of- 
fered a prize of £5 for the best synonym and " mem- 
bers have been most prolific in their ideas." The 
examples given of their fecundity are, however, so 
malformed as to lead to the hope that in future they 
will practise an intellectual Malthusianism. The 
Chairman of the Club says that amongst the terms 
suggested are Britainer, Britonial, Imperialist, Do- 
minion, Britannian, Britoner, Greater Briton, Ang- 
lian Pan-Briton, and such repulsive composts as Em- 
pirean, Transmarine (why not Ultramarine?), 
Away-Born, Out-Briton, Co-Briton, Albionian, Mac- 
Briton, and Britson. What those which he does 
not publish were like one can only surmise; but no 
doubt Ap-Briton, O'Briton, Britidian, Britkinson, 
Dominisher, Fraternanglian, Nonsunsetton, and 
Heptathalassian were among them. And so, pos- 
sibly, was Oversear. 

133 



Books in General 

It needs must be that new words should come; 
and one should not cry woe against those through 
whom they come. We are constantly inventing or 
importing words to convey ideas or shades of feeling 
for which we previously had no exact means of ex- 
pression. We also necessarily acquire new words 
for new objects, such as chemicals and machines. 
When men made the telephone they had to call it 
something; and the same thing applied to the omni- 
bus. We can frequently trace new words to their 
inventors. But we may safely say that successful 
new words are seldom " made up " cold-bloodedly 
merely for the sake of the thing. An author hits 
upon a word half-accidentally, developing it usually 
from some word already familiar; or a philosopher 
or scientist constructs one out of fragments of Greek, 
or Latin, or Greek and Latin mixed, because he has 
a new object to describe. The process is going on 
continually. The rivals " airman " and " aviator " 
(somebody once asked if you could call a miner a 
" talpiator") are at present* fighting it out in the 
Press anci on men's tongues; and if some central 
authority is in the future established over the heads 
of the sovereign Powers, it is likely that the word 
" supernational," now being bruited about, may 
come into use to describe it. We may get in time, 
too, an inclusive word which will imply " citizen of 
the British Empire," covering both Britons (or, if 
you prefer it, Britirish) and Colonials. But I doubt 

♦Airman happily seems (July 1918) to have won. — S. E. 



£5 Misspent 

whether such a word will result from a public com- 
petition. 

When it comes it will come because some one 
person starts using it and others take to it. And 
when it is a case of inventing a synonym, a new 
word as a substitute for an old one in general use, 
I think it most unlikely that a group of persons such 
as the Overseas Club could persuade the race to 
abandon a universally used word like " Colonial " 
for some £5 prize word merely because hypersensi- 
tive people think that the word used to have a faintly 
derogatory flavour. " Colonial " is very strongly 
entrenched. One can just understand how the 
Americans have come to use the abominable word 
"Britisher" instead of the ancient "Briton"; for 
It falls more trippingly off the tongue. But " Co- 
lonial " is a most liquid, easy, and euphonious word. 
If it is ever superseded, it will be so because some 
other word comes in with the larger connotation 
to which I have referred, a word which is bound to 
come Into being when we cease to think of the Empire 
as composed of the United Kingdom on the one hand 
and the Colonies on the other, but think of it as a 
federation of equal and distinct units. 

It Is a pity that people take so seriously the fact 
that when the words " Colonies " and " Colonial " 
were Urst used by us they had certain associations. 
For it Is evident that to the vast majority of our 

^35 



Books in General 

countrymen they are entirely divested of them. 
Whatever one's habits, one automatically thinlcs 
when the word " Colonial " is mentioned, not of a 
humble emigrant who wants shepherding, but of a 
person who is the very quintessence of independence. 
Any one who has even the most superficial acquaint- 
ance with the language knows that words can lose 
their old associations utterly. If, for example, I 
were arrested and charged for alleging, in a public 
speech, one of our Royal Princes to be " a silly 
knave," I should not find the magistrate very sympa- 
thetic if I said I was using the words in a Shake- 
spearean (which in this case would be equivalent to 
a Pickwickian) sense, and that I merely meant to 
call him " a simple boy." Similarly, where an ob- 
ject changes its form its name changes its connota- 
tion. If one could talk of a bottle to a mediaeval 
ancestor, he would think of something made of 
leather; to-day a bottle is essentially something made 
of glass. If we always wanted a new term directly 
a new association was created, there would be no end 
to the process; we should have to have a Ministry 
of Constructive Philology always at work. After 
all, Charleston was named after an English king 
when the North American plantations were very 
subordinate indeed; and Melbourne after a member 
of the British House of Lords, an institution of 
which few modern Australians approve. So, on the 
whole, saving the Overseas Club's reverence, we may 
as well, for the time being, stick to " Colonial." 
136 



Shakespeare's Women and 
Mr. George Moore 

HANDLING the Porcupine of Avon is al- 
ways ticklish work. When Mr. George 
Moore, after containing himself for years, 
at last wrote to explain that it was he, and not Mr. 
Shaw or Mr. Franz Heinrichs, who discovered the 
fact that Shakespeare's female characters were weak 
because they were written for boy-actors, it was only 
natural that another correspondent should show that 
Mr. Moore had been forestalled by an eighteenth- 
century Frenchman. Mr. Moore's remark about 
the boy-actors was, however, merely a passing ob- 
servation in a lecture in French (published in the 
Revue Bleue in 1910) which is an important docu- 
ment in the movement against what Mr. Shaw calls 
Bardolatry. 

" He is inconceivably wise ; the others conceiv- 
ably." Thus Emerson; and a few generations of 
such sweeping remarks were bound to be followed 
by a reaction. For a hundred years we have swal- 
lowed Shakespeare steadily and swallowed him 
whole; a man has even written a book on The Mes- 
siahship of Shakespeare. And of all his powers, 

137 



Books in General 

that of creating an infinite variety of female char- 
acter has been perhaps more enthusiastically praised 
than any other. The professors have given us 
treatises on Shakespeare's Feminine Types; and the 
less erudite public has been deluged with Posies 
from Shakespeare's Garden of Girls. " O Nature 1 
O Shakespeare! which of ye drew from the other? " 
That is typical. Dr. Lewes, one of the ablest Ger- 
man writers on the subject, kneels and adores, and 
asks women to do the same. " This piece," he says 
of Henry Fill, 

" this piece and its female characters should indeed 
inspire women with profound gratitude towards a 
poet who represents a queen and a heroine who is 
above all things an excellent woman, displaying in 
the midst of frightful trials all the best womanly 
qualities, thus proving that a noble, pure feminine 
heart is the home of the noblest virtue, the highest 
truth and purity. Seldom has more flattering hom- 
age been paid to the sex than by Shakespeare in his 
presentation of Catherine of Aragon." 

And hear Mrs. Jamieson, author of the best-known 
English book on these women. Dare any one apply 
the epithet " clever " to Portia, " this heavenly com- 
pound of talent, feeling, wisdom, beauty, and gentle- 
ness"? As for Lady Macbeth, with her "Gothic 
grandeur, rich chiaroscuro, and deep-toned colours," 
even she is not to be insulted by comparison with 
138 



Shakespeare's Women and Mr. G. Moore 

other villainesses. Sophocles' Clytemnestra had 
been mentioned, but 

" would any one compare this shameless adulteress, 
cruel murderess and unnatural mother with Lady 
Macbeth? Lady Macbeth herself would certainly 
shrink from the approximation." 

One has sometimes felt that her ladyship was prob- 
ably president of the local branches of the G.F.S. and 
the Soldiers' and Sailors' Families Association. 

There was nothing of this sort about Mr. George 
Moore's lecture. It opened with a strong protest 
against the " vast clamour " of Shakespeare's wor- 
shippers: 

" One might take them for a gathering of negro 
Methodists in a chapel, each one straining his lungs 
to out-bellow his neighbour, in order to attract the 
Almighty's attention. Is it that the critics think 
that Shakespeare is listening to them? At any rate, 
the madness increases daily, and, if the cult of 
Jahveh should happen to decay in England, I should 
not be surprised were they to promote Shakespeare 
to the vacant throne in the heavens." 

After this engaging beginning he went on to the 
general contention that neither Shakespeare nor any 
of his contemporaries drew or painted a real woman. 
The Renaissance was interested in women only as 

139 



Books in General 

queens or odalisques, and Shakespeare at most made 
a few delicious silhouettes of women. His men 
were another matter. " Hamlet is the secret 
thought of all men"; and, though it hurts Mr. 
Moore to agree with Tolstoi, he reaffirmed Tolstoi's 
statement that " Falstaff is the most universal and 
original thing in Shakespeare." " Hamlet is the 
hieroglyphic and symbol of the intellect; Falstaff is 
the symbol and arabesque of the flesh." But 
Shakespeare, like Balzac, was chiefly concerned with 
" the eternal masculine." 

But suppose it be admitted that Shakespeare has 
no female Hamlet and no female Falstaff; is it not 
arguable that then the case for the superiority of 
Shakespeare's males over his females is very much 
less strong? It would be absurd to attempt to dog- 
matize on the subject; but personally I doubt 
whether any one who cannot get inside the minds of 
most (though many would exempt Heine's " ancient 
Parisienne " Cleopatra, and one or two more) of 
Shakespeare's women will get inside the minds of 
most of his men either. When Professor Dowden 
said that he had " edited a whole play for love of 
Imogen " the remark (if he heard it) may have 
sounded strange to Mr. Moore; but would he un- 
derstand, either, any one editing a whole play for 
love of Antonio, Bassanio, Benedict, the Duke of 
Twelfth Night, King Lear, Othello, Mark Antony, 
or Henry V? It is possible to hold the view that 
140 



Shakespeare's Women and Mr. G. Moore 

Shakespeare " put himself " Into a few characters 
and observed the others " from the outside," mak- 
ing them most interesting when they are most mark- 
edly what are called " character parts." Person- 
ally, though I should certainly know Hamlet or 
Falstaff if I met them in swallowtails, I don't think 
there are many other of Shakespeare's characters 
whom I should recognize if I encountered them 
clothed in other than their traditional garments. 
But I do not think it is easy to sustain the argument 
that, as a whole, his women are less carefully and 
sympathetically drawn than his men — Lady Mac- 
beth than Macbeth, Juliet than Romeo, Cleopatra 
than Anthony, Beatrice than Benedict, Rosalind than 
Orlando — or, still more, that he was not interested 
in women and regarded them in a casual lazy way 
as decorations. Shakespeare's politics were Heaven 
knows what; and he may not necessarily have drawn 
Portia as an argument for the admission of women 
to the Inns of Court. But one would have imagined 
that if ever there were a writer who treated women 
and men on a footing of complete equality, and even 
perhaps elevated women's moral superiority to an 
indefensible pitch, it was he. If his female char- 
acters are not living human beings it is certainly not 
because he despised them. He gave them plenty 
of virtue, wit, courage, and will, and an ample share 
of the stage; it is, with all due respect to Mr. Moore, 
grotesque to suggest that he thought of them merely 
as properties. 

141 



Books in General 

The recent correspondence sent me back to Mr. 
Moore's paper, and I read It with admiration for 
the fruits of what he called a month's rather ex- 
hausting liaison with the French language. But 
something about it — perhaps it was the catalogue 
of heroines, each with an appropriate criticism — 
seemed familiar. I have tracked it; here also Mr. 
Moore has been anticipated. It was the late Max 
O'Rell — it is almost like being anticipated by 
Charley's Aunt — who remarked that 

*' The heroines of Shakespeare are for the most 
part slaves or fools. Juliet is a spoilt child, Des- 
demona a sort of submissive odalisque, Beatrice a 
chatterbox, and Ophelia a goose." 

It is very difficult indeed to say anything new about 
Shakespeare. 



142 



Moving a Library 



I DO not remember that any of our meditative 
essayists has written on the subject of Moving 
One's Books. If such an essay exists I should 
be glad to go to it for sympathy and consolation. 
For I have just moved from one room to another, in 
which I devoutly hope that I shall end my days, 
though (as Mr. Asquith would put it in his rounded 
way) " at a later, rather than at an earlier, date." 
Night after night I have spent carting down two 
flights of stairs more books than I ever thought I 
possessed. Journey after journey, as monotonously 
regular as the progresses of a train round the Inner 
Circle : upstairs empty-handed, and downstairs creep- 
ing with a decrepit crouch, a tall, crazy, dangerously 
bulging column of books wedged between my two 
hands and the indomitable point of my chin. The 
job simply has to be done; once it is started there is 
no escape from it; but at times during the process 
one hates books as the slaves who built the Pyramids 
must have hated public monuments. A strong and 
bitter book-sickness floods one's soul. How igno- 
minious to be strapped to this ponderous mass of 
paper, print, and dead men's sentiments! Would 
it not be better, finer, braver, to leave the rubbish 
where it lies and walk out into the world a free, un- 
trammelled, illiterate Superman? Civilization! 

143 



Books in General 

Pah! But that mood is, I am happy to say, with 
me ephemeral. It is generated by the necessity for 
tedious physical exertion and dies with the need. 
Nevertheless the actual transport is about the brief- 
est and least harassing of the operations called for. 
Dusting (or " buffeting the books," as Dr. Johnson 
called it) is a matter of choice. One can easily say 
to oneself, " These books were banged six months 
ago " (knowing full well that it was really twelve 
months ago), and thus decide to postpone the cere- 
mony until everything else has been settled. But the 
complications of getting one's library straight are 
still appalling. 

Of course, if your shelves are moved bodily it is 
all right. You can take the books out, lay them 
on the floor in due order, and restore them to their 
old places. But otherwise, if you have any sense 
of congruity and proportion, you are in for a bad 
time. My own case could not be worse than it is. 
The room from which I have been expelled was low 
and square; the room into which I have been driven 
is high and L-shaped. None of my old wall-shelves 
will fit my new walls; and I have had to erect new 
ones, more numerous than the old and totally differ- 
ent in shape and arrangement. It is quite impos- 
sible to preserve the old plan; but the devisal of 
another one brings sweat to the brow. If one hap- 
pened to be a person who never desired to refer 
to his books the obvious thing to do would be to 
144 



Moving a Library 

put the large books into the large shelves and the 
small ones into the small shelves and then go and 
smoke a self-satisfied pipe against the nearest post. 
But to a man who prefers to know where every book 
is, and who possesses, moreover, a sense of System 
and wishes everything to be in surroundings proper 
to its own qualities, this is not possible. Even an 
unsystematic man must choose to add a classifica- 
tion by subject to the compulsory classification by 
size; and, in my case, there is an added difficulty pro- 
duced by a strong hankering for some sort of chron- 
ological order. There is nothing like that for 
easy reference. If you know that Beowulf will be at 
the left-hand end of the shelf that he fits and Julia 
Ward, the Sweet Singer of Michigan, at the right- 
hand end, you save yourself a good deal of time. 
But when your new compartments do not fit your 
old sections, when the large books of Stodge are 
so numerous as to insist upon intruding into the 
shelves reserved for large books of Pure Literature, 
and the duodecimos of Foreign Verse surge in a 
tidal wave over the preserves of the small books on 
Free Trade, Ethics, and Palaeontology, one Is re- 
duced to the verge of despair. That is where I 
am at this moment; sitting in the midst of a large 
floor covered with sawdust, white distemper, nails, 
tobacco-ash, burnt matches, and the Greatest Works 
of the World's Greatest Masters. Fortunately, in 
Ruskln's words, " I don't suppose I shall do it again 
for months and months and months." 

145 



Table-Talk and Jest Books 

SAMUEL BUTLER'S Note-Books have now 
gone into another (popular) edition, issued 
by Mr. Fifield. I don't know how large these 
editions are: if, as I fear, they run to less than fifty 
thousand copies apiece, Samuel Butler has not yet 
got his due. There is no other volume in the whole 
of his collected works to equal this selection from his 
note-books : you have here the quintessence of his 
wisdom, his taste, and his superb impudence. The 
book really belongs to the " table-talk " or " ana " 
class of books. Butler, that is to say, recorded his 
own table-talk. His principle was, he said, that if 
you wanted to record a thought you had to shoot it 
on the wing. If, therefore, he thought of or said 
anything especially illuminating or amusing, or heard 
any one else say anything of the sort, down it went. 
And it always went down as colloquially and freshly 
as if a Boswell had been present recording conversa- 
tion with a faithful pen. Butler Boswellized him- 
self. For Boswell's Life, as has been remarked 
before, is the greatest collection of " ana " in the 
language. It consisted of Johnson's table-talk 
strung on a biographical thread. 

Personally I find it hard to draw the line be- 
146 



Table-Talk and Jest Books 

tween general table-talk and anecdotes told of cer- 
tain persons: most collections include both. But 
such works, of whatever kind, consisting of detached 
scraps of great men's wit, are an agreeable form of 
reading, and an old-established one. The Greeks 
possessed volumes of excerpts from people's con- 
versation, and some Latin wrote a book, now un- 
fortunately lost, under the piquant title of De Jocis 
Ciceronis. The great age of such collections began, 
however, with the Renaissance, when Poggio the 
Florentine collected his " facetiae." My own ex- 
tracts from Poggio are included in a German col- 
lection of 1603, all written in Latin, which gives also 
the " facetiae " of other wits, notably of Nicodemus 
Frischlin of Balingen. This man was a German 
scholar of exceptional brilliance who finally, on be- 
ing incarcerated for the last of many escapades, 
broke his neck trying to escape. We have no such 
University professors of classics now. " Ana " 
so-called begin with the Scaligerana, which gave the 
drastic conversation of the younger Scaliger as re- 
corded by two of his disciples. The success of this 
led to a rush in France. Every one who had known 
an eminent man deceased rushed out with a volume 
of table-talk; Thiiana, Perroniana, etc. The Sor- 
beriana " sive excerpta ex ore Samuelis Sorbiere " 
was famous in its day, but I find it very dull. Much 
the best collection is Menagiana, " Bon Mots, 
Rencontres Agreables, Pensees Judicieuses, et Ob- 
servations Curieuses de M. Menage," of which the 

147 



Books in General 

second edition (my copy) is dated 1694-5. This 
man was a scholar, knew everybody and had a sharp 
tongue : he is extremely good reading, though, now- 
adays, very little read. The contents of both of 
these books are arranged (as is Butler's) under sub- 
ject-headings, in alphabetical order. The same 
order is observed in Selden's Table-Talk, the next 
best book of the kind to Boswell in our tongue. It 
was published after Selden's death by his private 
secretary, and is full of extraordinarily sensible and 
witty things. And, unlike many wits, Selden always 
possessed a sense of responsibility. He remarked 
himself (under heading " Wit," as he did not 
realize) that 

" He that lets fly all he knows and thinks may by 
chance be satyrically witty. Honesty sometimes 
keeps a man from growing rich, and civility from 
being witty." 

Few of the wits whose sayings are collected are so 
scrupulous. Our other classical example in the kind 
is Coleridge's Table-Talk, which is full of fine criti- 
cism, funny stories, and good epigrams. 

These collections shade off into the ordinary jest 
book. After all, there is no clear division between 
stories told by a dead man and stories collected and 
published by a living one, between stories about one 
man and stories about fifty different men. When 
148 



Table-Talk and Jest Books 

the new learning was still new, men had a mania for 
collecting pointed anecdotes about the eminent. 
The fattest book of the kind I know is Casper Ens's 
Epidorpidum, published at Cologne in the early 
seventeenth century. It is full of the remarks of 
Alexander to Diogenes and Pope Innocent to St. 
Vitus and the repartees of King Pyrrhus of Epirus 
to a recalcitrant phalanx. Right on into the eigh- 
teenth century works with titles hke Elite de Bon- 
Mots, and full of such historical personages, were 
popular on the Continent. English jest books were 
perhaps more local and contemporary in their refer- 
ences. Our eighteenth-century ancestors were ad- 
dicted to anecdotes about Mr. Quin and Mr. Foote 
and what the Duke of Wharton said to the Bishop. 
In our own time the larger, if not the smaller, public 
still shows some demand for collections of anecdotes 
of this sort: and popular weeklies of the Answers 
and Tit-Bits type usually seem to find it desirable to 
print columns of stories about Henry Irving, Mr. 
Gladstone, and such people. But it is a long way 
from Tit-Bits to Samuel Butler: which shows where 
one may land oneself if one does not know where 
to draw a firm line when shading-off is apparently 
gradual. I cannot review Butler at this time of day; 
but there are very few books existing which contain 
more sense to the square inch than this. Though 
the worst of his books is good reading, the Note- 
Books is as certainly his finest book as Boswell's 
Johnson is the finest of Johnson's, 

149 



Stephen Phillips 

THE announcements of Stephen Phillips's 
death must have carried many people's 
thoughts backward. Me personally it 
took back to a time, years ago, when I was in the 
first flush of my youthful beauty and sitting out at 
a country dance. Coloured lamps burned between 
boughs, trees gently swished under a summer sky, 
the sound of violins and the glide of many feet pene- 
trated softly from a distance; and a partner, whose 
face was shadowy pale in the faint light, sat clasping 
her knees, looking out into the night, and talking in 
a deep ecstatic voice of Marpessa, Herod, and Paolo 
and Francesca. It was not merely that she thought 
that I was that sort of person: the same thing was 
happening in every county in England. Phillips 
had the biggest boom that any English poet has had 
for a generation. The extravagance of the eulogies 
seems very strange now. There was scarcely a 
critic who did not lose his balance. I have just been 
looking up some of these panegyrics, and the pitch of 
them makes one feel a little sadly for a man who 
outlived so great and so early a fame. The history 
of literature was ransacked for comparisons. 
Chapman, Webster, Wordsworth, Shakespeare him- 
self were brought in : and almost the most modest of 
150 



Stephen Phillips 

the assessors was Mr. William Archer, who de- 
scribed Phillips as " the elder Dumas speaking with 
the voice of Milton." I remember the Daily Mail 
devoting its magazine page to a description of the 
poet, in the course of which it explained, with charac- 
teristic love of figures, that here was a man who 
had discovered how to make £1000 a year out of 
poetry. But it did not last. The climax of 
Phillips's success came with Paolo and Francesca; 
the subsequent plays were received with a dimin- 
uendo of warmth; and in the last few years he was 
comparatively ignored. 

The early adoration was absurd but not incompre- 
hensible. It was due, one might say, to the fact 
that Phillips was not an original writer. Much used 
to be made of a certain trick he had of accenting 
occasional lines of blank verse in a strange manner: 
on the strength of this he was treated as a revolu- 
tionary innovator in English prosody. In reality, 
in spite of this one peculiarity, he was anything but 
an innovator. He had an ear for the magniloquent 
progress of Milton's verse and the crooning music 
of Tennyson's; he had a great facility for repro- 
ducing them; and to those who are susceptible only 
to artistic effects which (though they are unconscious 
of it) remind them of effects previously experienced, 
he seemed, therefore, to be a consummate artist. 
He gave them precisely what they had learnt to de- 
sire and expect from a poet, the familiar splendours 

151 



Books in General 

and the familiar silences, the familiar agonies and 
the familiar tendernesses, the scents, the flowers, the 
gems, the old words with their unmistakable associ- 
ations, the brilliant single lines, with here and there 
an alliteration and here and there an onomatopoeia. 
His work was not, of course, a mere compost. He 
added something. His emotions, though not deep, 
were genuine enough; he had a pretty fancy; and 
he had a considerable knowledge of how to produce 
effects on the stage, Paolo and Francesca was cer- 
tainly in every way superior to most of the other 
attempts which have been made in our time at stage- 
plays in blank verse. It was effective in the theatre. 
One remembers the excitement about the skilful end- 
ing: the murder behind the scenes, the bodies 
brought in, the murderer's revulsion: 

/ did not know the dead could have such hair. 
Hide them. They look like children fast asleep. 

But those who did not shrink from comparing it 
with Romeo and Juliet omitted to notice the same 
deficiencies as appeared in all his work. He was 
largely derivative and there was very little hard 
brainwork behind his verse, 

Herod, Ulysses, and Nero were all less well 
made: the last two were panoramas. In all three 
the author depended on succulent or flamboyant 
" purple patches " for his effects, descriptions too 
152 



Stephen Phillips 

full of redundant metaphor and violent outbursts of 
picturesque but too flimsy rhetoric. There was lit- 
tle characterization in them, the persons were pup- 
pets in the hands of the contriver of stage spectacles: 
they were carried off by brilliant and exotic scenery 
and costumes, by the romantic language, and by the 
real and skilful, if conventional, melody of the verse. 
All the best qualities of Stephen Phillips, the quali- 
ties that gave people a thrill they were unaccustomed 
to in the theatre of his time, are quintessentialized in 
Herod's megalomaniac speeches and in the oratori- 
cal Marlowesque remark that one of the suitors in 
Ulysses made to Penelope : 

Thou hast caught splendour from the sailless sea 
And mystery from the many stars outmatched. 

His defects were observed by few when he was a 
popular dramatist: but those readers who only know 
him by his later work will misjudge him if they 
think that he never had more power than he showed 
in that. His more recent volumes, written in ill- 
health, would never have got him a reputation. 
Here and there the old bravura appeared, and there 
is a short lyric in the volume of 19 13 which is cer- 
tainly equal to anything in the early book of poems 
with which he made his name — and in which he 
showed signs of contact with the " movement " of 
the 'nineties. But from most of these later poems 
the life had gone, leaving the imitative structure 

153 



Books in General 

naked to the eye. His last volume, Panama and 
other Poems, was Issued just before he died by his 
original publisher, Mr. John Lane; and the way in 
which he had succumbed to his influences was very 
evident. Lines on the Canal such as 

Chagres by Dam stupendous of Gatun 

not merely remind one of Milton but are exact 
mechanical reproductions of Milton. 

Incidentally the difficulties of literary biography 
are illustrated by his obituary notices. My Daily 
News gave his age as forty-nine, my Times gave it 
as fifty-one; and looking into the Encyclopedia 
Britannica to see which of these estimates It would 
confirm, I found that it alleged him to be forty-seven. 
The Encyclopedia says that he was at Queens' Col- 
lege, Cambridge, when he joined Mr. Benson's com- 
pany; the Times that he was cramming at Scoones'. 
When we have this conflict of evidence about a con- 
temporary who was known personally to hundreds 
of people in London, where are we with Eliza- 
bethans and Romans? Personally I believe that, 
In the matter of birth-dates, nothing is really reliable 
— not even a man's own statement — except public 
registers. 



154 



Gray and Horace Walpole 

IF a gentleman in Calabria digs up with a spade 
a hitherto unknown fragment of the obscure 
Latin historian P. Pomponius Fatto there is 
great excitement about it, and research congratulates 
itself upon its achievements. I can quite appreciate 
the feeling. All treasure-trove is exciting. The 
smallest recovery from the long-buried past is worth 
having; it may, in itself, fill a gap somewhere and en- 
courages the hope of greater finds. But why not 
make just as much of a palaver about Dr. Paget 
Toynbee's disinterment of nearly a hundred " new " 
letters by the poet Gray? The new letters are in- 
cluded in The Correspondence of Gray, Walpole, 
West, and Ashton (Oxford University Press, 2 
vols.) ; and they were found in the collection of 
Captain Sir F. E. Waller, who was recently killed In 
action, and to whose memory the volume is dedi- 
cated. Gray, Horace Walpole, Richard West, and 
Thomas Ashton formed a " Quadruple Alliance " at 
Eton. West went on to Oxford, the other three 
to Cambridge. We get first of all an exchange 
between all four; then West dies, in his twenties; 
then, years afterwards, relations with Ashton are 
broken; and, finally, there is a long series that 
passed between Walpole and Gray up to the time of 

155 



Books in General 

the poet's death in 177 1. In all there are 248 let- 
ters; of these 153 were written by Gray, eighty-nine 
of which have never been published before. Others 
have never before been printed in full, and few 
have escaped maltreatment by previous editors. 
Their errors ranged from deliberate alteration, 
truncation, and blending to bad transcription and un- 
intelligent acceptance. How easily the most comic 
errors may creep into a text where each editor ne- 
glects to use, or has not access to, original sources 
may be shown by the history of a single word. 
Gray wrote a Latin poem about the god of Love in 
which one line began " Ludentem fuge." This 
was printed by Miss Berry as " Sudentem fuge"; 
and this has been " corrected " by subsequent editors 
into '' Sudan tern fuge " ! 

The characters of the correspondents come out 
very clearly. Even when, just after they have left 
school, they are all writing rather affectedly (and 
with a plethora of classical quotation), Ashton is 
obviously the one fundamentally insincere member 
of the group. He is hyperself-conscious, nastily ar- 
tificial. Later on he even refers in Joseph Surface's 
very own words to his " noble sentiments " : this was 
clearly the man to make, by his double-dealing, the 
temporary breach between Gray and Walpole, and, 
ultimately, to compel Walpole to cast him off by his 
Incivility when Walpole was no longer useful to him. 
Richard West, son of an Irish Lord Chancellor, has 
156 



Gray and Horace Walpole 

no apparent defect save excessive seriousness. 
There is a touch of the priggish mixed with the high- 
mindedness and generosity of this able young in- 
valid; but one can understand Gray's devotion to 
him. Some of the poetry of his here given (he ap- 
peared in Dodsley's Miscellany by the way) is sur- 
prisingly good. He was the Arthur Hallam of the 
eighteenth century. 

The Walpole letters are, as always, unsurpassable 
of their kind. His undergraduate letter (in parody 
of Addison's descriptions of Italy) relating a jour- 
ney from London to Cambridge, is admirable ; but 
the letters describing his continental tour with Gray 
are better, and those, still later, about the beau 
monde of Paris are perfect. There is a peculiar 
charm too about the correspondence with Gray as to 
the details and publication of his works, the half- 
solemn, half whimsical concentration on the tiny 
antiquarian details to which each was addicted, 
the eager little controversies and explorations, 
the odd little jokes. But though Gray, taking 
his correspondence as a whole, considering both 
volume, range, and formal excellence, cannot con- 
test Walpole's position as the greatest of Eng- 
lish letter-writers, there is a flavour about his 
letters that makes them peculiarly delightful. Wal- 
pole writes fully dressed, though with exquisite 
manner; Gray writes naturally, and without ob- 
vious reserve sometimes even gambolling. There 

157 



Books in General 

may be people, familiar with Gray only through 
his elevated and sombre verse, who fancy him 
an exceedingly self-contained and formal man, 
who feel (like the person who greatly amused him 
by addressing him as "The Rev. T. Gray") that 
he simply must have been a divine. There were cer- 
tainly contemporaries of his who met him and got 
the impression that he was constitutionally grave, 
reticent, aloof. His letters show that he was any- 
thing but that to his friends. The author of the 
Ele^y habitually " played the goat." There are a 
whole string of skit letters here: in one he writes 
to Walpole as " Honner'd Nurse," addressing the 
illiterate screed " to mie Nuss att London " ; in an- 
other he wallows in Oriental imagery about the 
dew of the morning; in another he applies to stag- 
nant Cambridge a whole long passage from Isaiah 
describing deserted Babylon, the home of dragons 
and haunt of screech-owls. He had a great habit 
of ending his letters with something openly idiotic. 
Once he bursts out with " Pray, did you ever see an 
elephant? "; another time his peroration is: 

"The Assizes are just over. I was there; but 
I a'nt to be transported. Adieu! " 

and another excursion concludes with a ludicrous 
burlesque of the type of commonplaces usually to be 
found in letters: 

" There is a curious woman here that spins Glass, 
158 



Gray and Horace Walpole 

and makes short Aprons and furbelow'd petticoats 
of it, a very genteel wear for summer, & discover's 
all the motions of the limbs to great advantage. 
She is a successour of Jack, the Aple dumpling Spin- 
ner's: my Duck has eat a Snail &c. : & I am — yours 
sincerely T. G." 

Those who think of poets as persons without humour 
who live in a permanent exaltation and are quite 
unlike reasonable beings will be shocked with Gray's 
remarks when he had, to the publisher's alarm, with- 
drawn a poem from his forthcoming small volume : 

" but to supply the place of it in bulk, lest my work 
should be mistaken for the works of a flea or a 
pismire, I promised to send him an equal weight of 
poetry or prose : so, since my return hither, I put 
up about two ounces of stuff: viz. The Fatal Sis- 
ters, The Descent of Odin . . . with all this I shall 
be but a shrimp of an author." 

On a night nine years before this, General Wolfe, 
as his boat crept towards the Quebec bank of St. 
Lawrence, had recited the Elegy to his companions 
and told them that he had rather have written that 
poem than take Quebec. 

Gray's judgments on other authors (though he 
was unjust to the more fermentative kind of French- 
man) were uniformly good. He suspected Ossian, 
but hoped he was a fraud for the sake of the jest. 

159 



Books in General 

If, he said, Macpherson had done it all to hoax 
fools, " I would undertake a journey into the High- 
lands only for the pleasure of seeing him." He 
read Boswell's early book on Corsica and almost 
prophetically observed: 

" The pamphlet proves what I have always main- 
tained, that any fool may write a most valuable book 
by chance, if he will only tell us what he heard and 
saw with veracity." 

In politics he was interested only mildly, but he 
liked to gossip about them. " Do oblige me," he 
writes to Walpole, 

" with a change in the Ministry: I mean, something 
one may tell, that looks as if it were near at hand; 
or if there is no truth to be had, then a good likely 
falsehood for the same purpose. I am sorry to be 
so reduced." 

" A good likely falsehood " : is it not in perpetual 
demand? 



1 60 



A Horrible Bookseller 

PEOPLE often complain that booksellers know 
too little about the goods they sell. If only, 
the argument is, books were sold by men of 
taste, familiar with their contents, the public would 
buy more good literature: as things are, the blind 
bookseller leads the blind customer. There is some- 
thing in this. An educated bookseller can actually 
educate other people. Many intelligent young per- 
sons reach the age of twenty-one without having met 
a single person with the habit of good reading, and 
do not " get on to " literature because it has never 
been suggested to them that they will like it. Book- 
sellers may act as teachers. There are booksellers, 
though not many, who make a practice of " nursing " 
promising young customers, gradually cultivating 
their taste until they become confirmed book-lovers 
and book-buyers. One such complained to me not 
long ago that he had had scores of likely colts taken 
away from him by Lord Kitchener, and did not 
know how many of them would come back. That 
is an ideal sort of man for the trade in modern 
literature. One might say, in fact, that in a perfect 
world (from the book-buyer's point of view) the 
dealers in new books would know everything about 
books, and the dealers in old books would know 

i6i 



Books in General 

nothing whatever about them. The point of this 
last subsection is obvious, but the other day I had an 
experience that greatly fortified my view. I had 
often met the second-hand bookseller whose learn- 
ing prevented one from buying anything cheap from 
him; I have now encountered one whose interest 
in his subject prevented one from buying anything 
at all. 

He was not so much a really learned man as a 
man with what is called " an inexhaustible fund of 
information." It is quite possible that if he had 
had a real rarity in his shop he would have known 
nothing about it. But about the promiscuity of his 
reading there was no doubt. When I entered the 
shop he was seated at a table absorbing something 
that looked as if it might be the Travels of Living- 
stone or Speke. His spectacles were on his fore- 
head, his elbows on the table, his hands in his hair; 
and his beard almost touched his book. " Do you 
min^ if I go through? " I said. " Sairtainly," he 
said, betraying his origin. " And what may you be 
interested in?" "Oh . . . books," I replied 
vaguely. " That is a verra conseederable cate- 
gory," he observed. Was it poetry I liked? he went 
on. I murmured " Yes," and he led me to the 
place where he kept it. But before I had got my 
fingers on a book he made it evident that it was 
he and not I that was going to have the " look 
162 



A Horrible Bookseller 

round." Here, for example, was a volume of Kirke 
White. Had I ever read him? How wonderful 
was that hymn (quoted at length) of his! What a 
career! He was a butcher's son and a lawyer's 
clerk. He had a gift for mathematics, and they 
gave him a sizarship at Cambridge. He would 
have been one of the greatest figures in English 
literature had he lived. Was I interested in Italian 
books? Well, then, perhaps I would like a good 
copy of (!!!) / Promesst Sposi. It was extraordi- 
nary the number of copies of that book which must 
have been printed. But there was no supply without 
a demand. 

I tried in vain to check the torrent with some 
sort of remark which, though polite, might, never- 
theless, have an air of finality. It was no good. 
My fingers never got beyond touching the back of 
a book before he had taken down another, pulled 
me round, and fixed me with a glittering eye for 
which the Ancient Mariner himself would have been 
tempted to offer a large sum. Godwin, now. Did 
I like Caleb Williams? Yes, of course! But had 
I read his History of England? It was by way of 
being a reply to Clarendon. Clarendon was a great 
writer. But he was not impartial. And the worst 
of it was that he seemed to be impartial when he was 
most unfair. When he was sacrificing everything 
for his King he little thought how his loyalty would 

163 



Books in General 

be rewarded. He was too moral for Charles II; 
but, what was worse, he kept the purse-strings too 
tight. He would not give him money for one of 
his mistresses. Was it Barbara Palmer? No, it 
was not Barbara Palmer, and it was not Nelly Gwyn. 
At any rate, it was one of them. And when, in the 
end, the grant was made to her, she died before she 
got the money! 

This appeared to amuse the old man. When he 
had laughed himself out, it was to resume with some 
work, dated 1784, which contained a recipe for 
making a Prime Minister: the chief ingredients be- 
ing hypocrisy, mendacity, corruption, and cant. 
This opened up a large field of speculation. Who 
was Premier in 1784? Why, of course, it was 
young Billy Pitt! ("Yes," I said.) No, it was 
Rockingham. ("Yes," I said.) No, it wasn't; it 
was Bute. So it proceeded. I spent, in all, two 
hours in that shop; in the course of which time I 
had stolen glances at about six worthless books. 
For all I know it was as full of gems of purest ray 
serene as are the dark unfathomed caves of ocean. 
I left without making a single purchase, and the 
proprietor seemed quite hurt at this unfriendly re- 
sponse to his attentions. How that old man earns 
his living I don't know. I think he must have priv- 
ate means. But in future I shall have a warmer 
feeling than ever for the sort of red-nosed second- 
hand bookseller, now, unfortunately, not very com- 
164 



A Horrible Bookseller 

mon, who knows only the outsldes of books, and 
who sits smoking on a heap of rubbish in the corner 
of his shop with the air of a tramp resting on a 
roadside pile of stones. 



i6s 



The Troubles of a Catholic 

BEING at the moment in bed with influenza, 
I was at once incapable of intellectual effort 
and in need of spiritual sustenance. I had 
therefore been reading a little Theology. The 
more modern works of the kind in my possession are 
at once too profound in thought and too arid in 
phraseology, so I worked rapidly backwards. One 
never knows what one is going to come across, and in 
the beginning of A Just Discharge to Dr. Stilling- 
fleet's Unjust Charge of Idolatry Against the Church 
of Rome with a Discovery of the Vanity of his late 
Defense in his Pretended Answer to a Book Entitled 
Catholicks No Idolaters By way of Dialogue Be- 
tween Eunomius , a Conformist, and Catharinus, a 
Nonconformist, I struck a very pathetic thing. The 
work was written, I believe, by the Cathohc contro- 
versialist Godden, and published in 1677. At that 
time it was difficult for Catholics to get anything out 
in England, and this work was published at Paris. 
Hence the unhappy author's statement about 
"Errata": 

" The English Press being watch'd of late, as the 
Orchard of the Hesperides was of old, and a ne- 
cessity arising from thence of making use of a Paris 
166 



The Troubles of a Catholic 

Printer, who understands not a word of English, the 
Reader will have no cause to wonder, if he some- 
times meet with ant for and, bu for but, te for the, 
is for it, tit for tis, wish for with, etc., and often- 
times with false Pointings, words unduly joined, and 
syllables un-artificially divided at the end of lines, 
as Ro-me, appropria-te, and the like. I can assure 
him, the Correction of the Press cost little less pains 
than the writing of the Treatise." 

In that century a great many English books were 
printed on the Continent, at Paris, Douai, and else- 
where; and the situation thus candidly explained 
must have been a common one. A collection of 
English books printed abroad, which would be in- 
teresting for other reasons, might also have an 
added interest as a repository of comic misprints. 
But my disease must have brought me very low that 
I can spend my time thinking of that. 



167 



The Bible as Raw Material 

MR. GEORGE MOORE'S new novel, The 
Brook Kerith, is a Biblical story. Mr. 
Moore has adopted the legend which says 
that Our Lord survived the Crucifixion. He is 
taken away alive and joins a colony of the Essenes, 
complications afterwards arising with St. Paul. 
The book is named after the site of the Essene set- 
tlement; Mr. Moore personally toured the Holy 
Land looking for a really eligible position. The 
story opens with a description of the boyhood of 
Joseph of Arimathea : a beginning which at least 
avoids the reproach of being obvious. 

One might almost say that literature about Bibli- 
cal personages can only hope to be good if its writers 
either deal with episodes that are not related in the 
Bible or if they tell the Bible stories from an entirely 
novel and unconventional point of view. Anatole 
France's story about Pontius Pilate, The Procurator 
of Judaea, has this last quality, and owes its success 
mainly to the odd and unexpected angle from which 
the subject is approached. The unusual angle we 
may at least expect from Mr. George Moore. At- 
tempts at covering the same ground as the Bible, at 
amplifying an already fine thing, are almost pre- 
i68 



The Bible as Raw Material 

destined to failure. One can understand the temp- 
tation. A modern writer comes across a noble story 
or a fine lyric passage, and thinks, " What a scandal 
that this should be buried away out of sight in the 
Old Testament! It is just the theme for me." 
The lure is so strong that one contemporary poet 
has attempted, and failed (through not ignomin- 
iously), to rewrite David's Lament for Jonathan, 
and another has endeavoured to adapt the dramatic 
poem Job to the modern stage. It was a lamentable 
affair, redeemed only from complete inconspicuous- 
ness by a highly incongruous chorus inspired by 
Swinburne and by an arresting entry of Satan with 
the salutation: 

Ho Job! How goes it? 

No modern — but I have not thoroughly ransacked 
my memory — has really succeeded in rewriting a 
Bible story. The most striking of recent efforts was 
Mr. Sturge Moore's Judith. Mr, Robert Trevel- 
yan's poem. The Foolishness of Solomon (a title 
that, for some vague reason, I always resent), be- 
longed to the other class of works dealing with 
Biblical personages (though he brought in a Chinese 
mandarin as well), but not on the Biblical lines. 
The most recent effort at elaborate treatment of the 
New Testament story was, I suppose, Maeterlinck's 
Mary Magdalene. But in spite of its unorthodoxy 
and the novelty (at least as far as the Bible is con- 

169 



Books in General 

cerned, for some of It was borrowed from a Ger- 
man) of the incidents, that play scarcely competed, 
in point of dialogue or dramatic force, with the 
more old-fashioned narratives of Matthew, Mark, 
Luke, and John. 

Milton is the one English writer who has done 
anything with Biblical materials on a large scale. 
It will be observed, however, that in Paradise Lost 
he enormously elaborated the story in Genesis; that 
his Adam and Eve are somewhat colourless; and 
that the finest parts of his poem are not directly 
concerned with " man's first disobedience and the 
fruit," but deal with regions Into which the author 
of Genesis did not penetrate. In Samson Agonistes 
he did take a story from the Bible and make out of 
it a work of art equal to almost anything in our 
language. Byron's Cain might mostly have been 
about Nietzsche for all the connexion It has with 
the Bible : but it is not very good. Almost every 
fine subject in the Scriptures must have been attacked 
at one time or another. There have been a few 
good short Biblical poems, like Browning's Saul. 
But the only other really reputable Biblical poem 
on a large scale that I can think of is Charles Wells's 
Joseph and His Brethren, which has strength as a 
story and some passages of fine Imagery. Wells 
belonged to the generation of Keats and lived on 
into our own time. He was an engineer, stopped 
writing when young, and was admired by Rossetti 
170 



The Bible as Raw Material 

and Swinburne. His poem, however, cannot really 
be considered such good reading as the Bible account 
of the same story. One of the episodes that came 
within his purview, that of Joseph and Potiphar's 
wife, has been a subject for poets in all ages. The 
last endeavour that I can recall to make something 
out of it was a somewhat bejewelled one of Sir 
Edwin Arnold's. The longest, I should think, is 
Joshua Sylvester's intolerably tedious series of 
couplets entitled The Maiden's Blush. Why he con- 
ferred that title upon such a poem I don't know, un- 
less he was thinking of what might happen to the 
less robust of his female readers. Those parts of 
Holy Writ which are of purely historical interest 
have not been freely drawn on by English writers. 
I don't remember that much has been done with 
the Maccabees, and the chronicles of the Kings of 
Israel, which supplied Racine with a subject for his 
Athalie, have left English writers cold. Jehu drove 
furiously, Jeroboam the son of Nebat made Israel 
to sin, and Rehoboam afflicted his people with scor- 
pions instead of whips; but their violence does not 
seem to fire the poetic imagination as does that of 
Herod, about whom we know very little more. But 
Herod, of course, was fond of the Russian ballet; 
which brings him closer to us. 



171 



How to avoid Bad English 

GOOD books on the practice of writing are 
rare. Sir A. Quiller-Couch's On the Art 
of Writing is extraordinarily good. It con- 
tains the lectures he delivered at Cambridge just 
before the war; and even readers who do not desire 
to write at all will find Sir Arthur's jokes very 
amusing and his criticisms, general and particular, 
sound and (what is more unusual) new. He 
touches a great variety of subjects, though always in 
some relation to the main theme. He is especially 
illuminating on the Authorized Version, and on Ho- 
mer's skill in deahng with the " Primary Difficulty of 
Verse " — that is to say, the difficulty of filling up 
the Interstices between highly emotional passages 
without lapsing into dull proslness. His most di- 
verting chapter Is that on what he calls " Jargon," 
which he distinguishes from Journalese. The dis- 
tinction he draws may be appreciated if I concoct 
examples of both commodities. Writing in " Jar- 
gon " I might say: 

" In the case of Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch I am 
proud and happy to associate myself In the fullest 
sense with a work of this useful, elevating, instruc- 
tive, and educative character." 
172 



How to avoid Bad English 

Writing in Journalese, as he defines it, I might say : 

" ' Q.'s brilliant book goes to the root of the 
matter. It strikes home. He is out to slay the 
dragons of bad writing. He burns them with the 
fire of his passion. He lashes them with the scourge 
of his invective. He tears them to shreds and tat- 
ters with the shrapnel of his ridicule. He will not 
sheathe the sword until . . ." 

Yes. . . . The first kind consists of woolly, indefi- 
nite words, of redundancies and shapeless prolixi- 
ties; the man who writes the second is trying to pro- 
duce what he believes to be " literature " by means 
of imagery and rhythmical movement. Sir Arthur 
says that the greatest propagators of Jargon are 
public bodies, politicians, and so on; but he recog- 
nizes that journalists also use it. The two things, 
in fact, are often seen in one article. I conceive that 
there might be passages which would fall into either 
of Sir Arthur's classes. But there is a clear differ- 
ence between bad sentences produced by an effort 
to say something and those produced by an effort to 
say something vividly. All bad writers, however, 
have common defects, and these are dealt with in 
other chapters. 

Every one who has thought about the art at all 
has discovered for himself the truths that Sir Arthur 

173 



Books in General 

tabulates. One must aim at accuracy (a word that 
covers almost everything that is needful) and at 
clarity; one must, normally, prefer the concrete to 
the abstract word, and the short word to the long; 
and one must avoid the superfluous adjective. How 
well we know these rules; how certain we are of 
their validity; how feebly we struggle to obey them! 
At all times the ready-made sentence, the makeshift 
epithet, the pot-shot image must have been ready to 
the hand. In the present age, when we live in a 
honeycomb of print and begin each day by exposing 
ourselves, before, during, or after breakfast, to 
masses of the weakest English we can find, the job 
of writing well is more difficult than ever. Our 
fluency is the measure of our accursed memory. 
We have bales of phrases ready for every experience 
we describe; our pigeon-holes are stuffed with dead 
metaphors and bogus synonyms; and we are always 
ready to say in six words what ought to be said in 
two. Every time we sit down at a desk or open our 
lips to speak, the nymphs Jargonia and Journalesia, 
besieging us as the sylphs besieged St. Anthony, hold 
out their hands full of glittering treasures which will 
save us the trouble of thinking. Usually we do not 
even see them; we find the fatal gifts in our hands 
and employ them without remembering their origin. 
And the descent to hell is rapid. 

It is good to revise : to correct, to improve, and 
to delete. Few, even of the most careful writers, 
174 



How to avoid Bad English 

find their proof-sheets free from trite and super- 
fluous words which they would be ashamed to pub- 
lish. It is better still to think long before writing, 
to make sure that one's thoughts are clear-cut before 
one gives them a visible form. That habit it is 
a writer's duty to acquire. But it does not do to be 
incessantly and acutely conscious of the qualities of 
good writing and the difficulty of securing them. 
That way madness lies. Sometimes, to a man who 
broods overmuch on these things, every phrase will 
appear a cliche, and every word a dummy. " God 
help me! " he will moan, "I have called the sun 
' bright ' and the grass ' green ' ! Millions of men 
before me have written ' bright sun ' and ' green 
grass.' I know I did not think freshly and inde- 
pendently at these objects. I put the adjectives 
down mechanically. I have merely heard that the 
grass was green. Why haven't I looked at it 
through my own eyes? If a real writer looked at 
It, I don't for a moment suppose that its greenness 
would be the attribute which would Impinge most 
forcibly upon him. Very likely it Isn't green at all." 
This, I say, does not do. I don't suggest that there 
is anything peculiar about grass which should make 
a novel statement about it Impossible. In fact, 
Swinburne said that grass is hair, and Mr. Chester- 
ton has very probably said that it is red. I merely 
use " green grass " as an example of the sort of 
thing that an exaggerated fastidiousness might lead 
a man to question In his own work. 

175 



Books in General 

There remains one property of good prose that 
no amount of painstaking or instruction can produce. 
That is rhythm. It is, indeed, remarkable that one 
of the most elaborate analyses of prose rhythms 
hitherto made was made by a writer whose own 
prose is anything but musical. Either Providence 
has given a man an ear or it has not; if it has not, 
he will not write great prose. But his prose will be 
better in proportion as he obeys the principles of 
good writing as " Q." enunciates them. One sug- 
gestion more might be useful for him. That is, 
that he will be well advised in making his uneuphon- 
ious sentences short if he desires his writing to be an 
efficient instrument of persuasion. 



176 



Woodland Creatures 

^'y^ARNASSUS in Piccadilly," is the headline I 
m-^ see in my paper. Follows an account of a 
A " seance " promoted by Miss Elizabeth As- 
quith in aid of the Star and Garter Home. Ten or 
twelve poets read works of their own to an audience 
of four hundred who had paid a guinea apiece. Out- 
side the house a large concourse watched the poets 
arrive. There were Mr. Yeats, Sir O. Seaman, Mr. 
Hewlett, Sir Henry Newbolt, Mr. Binyon, Mr. de- 
la Mare, Mrs. Woods, Mr. Belloc, and Mr. W. H. 
Davies, who is described as looking like " one of his 
own woodland creatures." I read that one of the 
reciters intoned, that another was bluff, and that a 
third ought to get somebody else to read for him; 
also that Mr. Birrell, the chairman, sat with his 
head buried in his hands until the arrival of the 
first comic turn, Mr. Belloc's. But I wish I had 
been there : for the account does not tell me how it 
was really done. 

Did the poets sit in the audience and march up 
to the platform one by one as their turns came? 
Did they stand out of sight, each gliding in singly, 
and then retiring into the antral seclusion of the 

177 



Books in General 

wings when ten minutes was up? Or did they 
rather, as I prefer to think, sit on the platform, the 
whole dozen of them in a semicircle, listening to, 
and discreetly applauding, each other's efforts. I 
am sorry I missed it. Some of them will have been 
exalted by a sense of the holiness of their work; 
their eyes will have looked out across the audience 
with a prophetic and otherworldly fire. Others will 
have been uneasy and not knowing (unless a table 
was thoughtfully provided) what to do with their 
feet. And one or two, I think, will have been pre- 
occupied with the control of their own faces, which, 
on such an occasion, must have " strained at the 
leash of dignified deportment." 

Why is it that so many people feel awkward when 
they are present at a public recitation by a poet of 
his own verse; and why should writers shrink from 
such recitations? Amusement on such occasions is 
closely allied to sheepishness: both spring from a 
feeling of inappropriateness, a sense that " the fit- 
ness of things " is being violated. We are accus- 
tomed, of course, to the other kind of recitation, the 
reading by an interpreter who is not a creator, and 
who is not exposing his heart in public: the prize 
child and the local elocutionist who declaims Tenny- 
son's Revenge, daintily fluttering his fingers in the 
air when he comes to the part about the pinnace 
which is like a bird. But our poets themselves have 
not recited much. It was not always so. " 'Omer 
178 



Woodland Creatures 

smote his bloomin' lyre " in public; he had nowhere 
else to smite it, for he (presumably) could not write, 
and his audiences could not read. Every composer 
of tribal lays, from Tubal-Cain (unless his songs 
were Lieder ohne Wbrte) to the Druidic harpists, 
sang his compositions to his admiring fellows with- 
out embarrassment; troubadours and mediaeval 
laureates had no objection at all to public recitation. 
Most foreigners, one supposes, do not feel so 
strongly as we do about it now; but the timidity of 
Englishmen in the matter is very pronounced. I am 
sure that nothing short of the needs of a War Fund 
would have induced some of the Piccadilly perform- 
ers to face the ordeal. 

It is all a part of our national reserve, that very 
reserve which, perhaps, accounts for the greatness 
and volume of our poetry. In poetry our feelings 
find an outlet. We have the habit of concealing our 
finest sentiments and our profoundest emotions. 
We don't mind putting them into books and then run- 
ning round the corner out of sight. But we dislike 
unbosoming them viva voce in the actual physical 
presence of strangers. Our dislike of " scenes " 
covers equally the public row in a restaurant and the 
public demonstration of our yearnings after virtue 
and the stirrings of our hearts when we hear the 
nightingale or listen to the Atlantic at night. We 
sit bolt upright at concerts; look at pictures with our 
mouths set like vices; and observe " Yes, very nice " 
as, with wistfulness in our breasts, we stand on a 

179 



Books in General 

hill and look at a wooded panorama under the 
moon. The grotesque Englishman who stares at 
a sunset and then laughs and says it looks like a 
fried egg is really bolting in terror from the admis- 
sion that it looks like the flaming ramparts of the 
world. So, if somebody gets up to recite his most 
intimate feelings, we feel it as almost an indecency. 
He is usually bashful about it himself, and unable 
therefore to recite with that abandonment which will 
do his poem justice. The audience, at least that 
part of it which is most intelligent and self-conscious, 
feels as if it were intruding. It is like eavesdrop- 
ping or opening a stranger's letters. And every- 
body is conscious of the national titter in the back- 
ground. When the authors of Prize Poems at the 
Universities give the official reading of their verses, 
their friends invariably assemble to grin in the gal- 
leries. Undergraduates have still some natural- 
ness. They titter aloud, but the adult Englishman 
titters in silence. It is reserve that brings forth the 
titter and it is still more reserve that suppresses it; 
just as it is reserve that makes our soldiers sing, 
not invocations to England, home, or glory, but 
comic songs about cowardice and death. 

The foregoing series of platitudes, slightly varied 
in accordance with each writer's tastes and talents, 
is invariably repeated when the character of English 
people Is under discussion. But it may be that, at 
any rate in our attitude towards poetry, we are 
i8o 



Woodland Creatures 

changing. In the last four or five years the habit 
of pubHc readings has been growing; and some of 
our poets have grown quite addicted to them. This 
may be a time of transition: if the enthusiasts for 
recitation keep at It hard enough, people's constraint 
may be overcome, and it may be regarded as quite 
an ordinary and natural thing for a man to stand 
on a platform and, with all the passion he can re- 
lease and all the vocal modulation he can command, 
chant his lyrics to congregations which will yield 
themselves to him with all the spontaneity, though 
less than all the gestures and ejaculations, of a Welsh 
revivalist's converts. It is a commonplace that 
poetry gains by being spoken; and that if verse were 
always read and never recited, poets would be in 
danger of getting out of touch with natural speech- 
rhythms. We could do with a little less amusement 
and a little more excitement; and we might as well, 
if cowardice or a sense of humour are the only things 
that hold us back, hold and attend public readings 
until we are as unselfconscious about them as we are 
about church services or political meetings. The 
worst of it is that poets do not invariably read well, 
and that few persons with the taste for standing on 
a platform and declaiming are competent to take 
an author's place as reciter of his work. There is 
such a thing as the inspired reader of other people's 
verse ; but the understanding, the inclination, and the 
voice cannot be expected to come often together. 
When the author himself is reciting you can at least 

i8i 



Books in General 

be certain that the speaker — unless he is a very 
''advanced" poet indeed — understands the work 
which he is repeating. With other performers one 
always has to take one's chance. From the profes- 
sional reciter GoB save us all. 



182 



Other People's Books 

LIKE most people, I possess a number of 
books which I have not read. I am not 
referring to volumes, such as the Speculum 
Morale of Vincent of Beauvais or the commentary 
of CEcolampadius on St. John's Gospel, which I 
bought merely because they looked pleasant and 
which nobody on earth could be expected to read. 
I mean books in English and of comparatively re- 
cent date. There is, for example, Kant's Critique 
of Pure Reason, for which, in a weak moment, I 
paid some shillings with the feeling that, as a cogita- 
tive being, I ought not leave so notable a stone un- 
turned. The feeling passed and never came back. 
And there is Ranke's History of the Popes — up to 
the present undisturbed by me; there are The Last 
Days of Pompeii, Romola, Vittoria, Carlyle's essays 
on Burns and Scott, What Maisie knew, What Katy 
did, and dozens of other modern works, some of 
which. If I live, I shall certainly read, and others of 
which, I am sure, I shall never begin. But it makes 
no difference. Whether he has read them or not, a 
man's own books get, in a manner, stale to him. If 
a book remains for years unopened on one's shelves 
It becomes Increasingly difficult to read It. Yet if 
one finds another edition of it In somebody else's 

183 



Books in General 

house one may fly to it, and, under the same condi- 
tions, one may read or re-read almost anything one 
iinds. 

So it is, at the moment, with me. I am in a place 
previously unknown to me. It is bestrewn with 
books; and, penned to the house by the brilliant sum- 
mer weather, I have been doing some miscellaneous 
reading. For one thing I have gone solidly once 
more through Mr. Thomas Hardy's verse. How 
extraordinarily good it is ! And how remarkably he 
has gone on improving, especially as a metrist. But 
more than ever, after a heavy dose of these com- 
pressed statements of his point of view, one realizes 
his determined and unmitigated gloom. It is at its 
densest in JVessex Poems, and in places one laughs 
outright at it. He illustrated the book himself, his 
drawing is naive, and the sketch of two floors of a 
church, the pews (and two lovers) above, and the 
skulls and cross-bones below, has an " I will be grim 
at all costs " air about it that robs it of all its horror. 
The story attached is a neat one. The man is a con- 
sumptive about to die; he asks the woman if she 
loves him? She falsely says "Yes" in order to 
brighten his last hours. He dies, and her life is 
ever after blighted because she cannot reconcile her- 
self to a Universe in which the telling of such lies is 
a moral obligation. There is another small drama 
in which a woman, maltreated by her husband, dies, 
telling her old lover that she wishes she had married 
184 



Other People's Books 

him and that her child could have been his child, 
and asking him to see that the brutal husband does 
not ill-treat the child. The brutal husband remar- 
ries and does ill-treat the child. One day he finds 
the lover mourning on the dead wife's grave, and 
demands by what right he is there. The lover, re- 
membering the death-bed remark and suddenly see- 
ing a chance of saving the child, says that he has 
every right to be there as he was really the father 
of the child. His supposed offspring is then left on 
his doorstep, to be looked after carefully, and he 
spends his time wondering whether he was justified 
in telling, etc. Probably these stories, if expanded 
into novels, might convince ; as narrative poems they 
do not; and when they are squeezed into the brief 
compass of the Satires of Circumstance they are 
grotesquely Life as Thomas Hardy makes it and 
not Life as Thomas Hardy sees it. 

It is a little bold in these days to admit that one 
hasn't read the whole of Mr. Conrad's works, but 
until this week I had never laid hands on Almayer's 
Folly. It was his first book. In his Reminiscences 
he gives an account of how it was begun, in a Pimlico 
lodging-house, when he was a sea captain and carried 
about the ocean for five years until (when he was 
thirty-five) he finished it. When, half-done and laid 
by, it was yellowing and mouldering, he showed it to 
his first reader, a Cambridge man going to Australia 
for his health, and asked him if it was worth com- 

185 



Books in General 

pleting. The passenger, with a nice economy of 
words, answered " Distinctly," and Captain Conrad 
was thus encouraged to proceed. I had read all this 
before, and also the novelist's statement that before 
this he had not attempted literature and had hardly 
ever written even a letter — though I suppose there 
must have been an occasional entry in a log, I have 
certainly been surprised by the craftsmanship of 
Almayer's Folly. Not only is the structure good, 
but the writing, except in one or two places, is aston- 
ishingly finished, accurate, and restrained. It is ab- 
surdly unlike a first book. Its weakness, as it ap- 
pears to me, lies in the dullness of the principal char- 
acter. It is difficult to keep up one's interest in a 
person whose main characteristic is his impotence. 
But it doesn't matter so much here as it might, for 
the subsidiary story of Dain and Nina is very fasci- 
nating, and the real hero, after all, is none of the 
people, white or Malay, but the Bornean river (its 
topography is not always clear to me) on whose 
overgrown banks they all live and the changes of 
which, night and day, are described with marvellous 
eloquence and certainty. 



i86 



Peacock 

FINALLY, after various minor excursions, I 
have settled down to the works of Thomas 
Love Peacock, of whom I had read noth- 
ing before except some poems. Why? I don't 
know, but I think his name has vaguely repelled me. 
Anyhow, I am thankful now that I have been able 
to come fresh to Peacock's novels. He has a few 
devotees, but it is surprising that so admirable a 
writer is not more read. Nightmare Abbey and 
Headlong Hall are not great masterpieces, but they 
are certainly small masterpieces. They belong to 
the class of intellectual comedy to which Candide, 
and, in some measure, Rasselas belong; in fact, they 
must certainly have been modelled on Candide. 
They are burlesques of oneself and one's friends, 
and every other discussing, theorizing person and his 
friends. Charlatans of all kinds, literary, political, 
eccelesiastical, and scientific, and philosophers of all 
kinds from the man who believes that upward 
progress Is inevitable to the man who believes that 
downward progress is undeniable, from the secret 
revolutionary conspirator to the professional sceptic; 
he gets them all in, quintessentializes their doctrines 
into exquisitely flowing prose, and knocks their heads 
together with charming ruthlessness. Any extract 
will Illustrate the flow of his dialogue: 

187 



Books in General 

" ' The anatomy of'the human stomach,' said Mr. 
Escot, ' and the formation of the teeth, clearly place 
man in the class of fungivorous animals.' 

" ' Many anatomists,' said Mr, Foster, ' are of 
a different opinion, and agree in discerning the char- 
acteristics of the carnivorous classes.' 

" ' I am no anatomist,' said Mr. Jenkinson, ' and 
cannot decide where doctors disagree; in the mean- 
time, I conclude that man is omnivorous, and on that 
conclusion I act.' 

" ' Your conclusion is truly orthodox,' said the 
Reverend Doctor Gaster; 'indeed, the loaves and 
fishes are typical of a mixed diet, and the practice 
of the Church in all ages shows ' 

" ' That it never loses sight of the loaves and 
fishes,' said Mr. Escot." 

If loud asseveration on my part sends to Peacock 
a few people who have not tried him before, I 
shall feel that the recent rain has not descended in 
vain. 



i88 



Wordsworth's ? Personal 
Dullness 

THE Strange Case of William Wordsworth 
is to me of perennial interest, and I have 
just emerged from several days' burrowing 
under Professor C. G. Harper's two enormous vol- 
umes entitled William Wordsworth, His Life, 
Works, and Influence. It is a conscientious and 
valuable piece of work, very fully documented, and 
containing much out-of-the-way information and a 
great deal of sensible, if not always illustrious, criti- 
cism. The information may perhaps be a little too 
ample for the weaker brethren. The map (show- 
ing lakes, mountain ranges (brown) and so on) of 
Wordsworth's country with which we open gives 
the clue to Professor Harper's exhaustive method. 
Every procurable date of Wordsworth's continen- 
tal programme is copied out; and we are even sup- 
plied with the winter and summer timetables of the 
Grammar School at Hawkshead which he attended 
and at which (as Professor Harper rather senten- 
tiously observes) an education different in kind, but 
perhaps not inferior in quality, to that supplied by 
Eton was bestowed upon him. New light is thrown 
on certain incidents in his career; his " circle " is 

189 



Books in General 

elaborately described; and a very charming picture 
is given of his sister Dorothy. But the old problem 
of Wordsworth's defects remains much where it did. 

It is a commonplace that Wordsworth is the most 
uneven of great poets. Every textbook writer tells 
one that when he was inspired he was a giant, that 
when he was not he wrote maundering doggerel, and 
that he himself never knew when he was and when 
he was not at his best. The Idiot Boy has been held 
up to the ridicule of generations — beyond its 
deserts perhaps. The point was most forcibly put 
by J. K. Stephen when he wrote a parody of Words- 
worth's " Two voices are there," saying that one of 
the voices was that of the sea, etc., and the other 
that of " an old half-witted sheep." But a thing 
less frequently faced, and never, as far as I know, 
properly explained, is his personal lack of attrac- 
tiveness. Flippant persons may be met who dismiss 
him as "a pompous old dullard"; but, generally 
speaking, whenever one hears such a remark it 
comes from some one who openly confesses that he 
cannot stand Wordsworth's poetry at any price, and 
that he has very seldom attempted to read it. The 
people who are in difficulties are those (and I am 
among them) who agree without qualification that 
Wordsworth is our greatest poet since Milton, but 
who cannot sincerely say that they are drawn 
towards him as a man. If they — any one who 
does not feel like this is happy and I do not speak 
190 



Wordsworth's Personal Dullness 

for him — pretend to be fond of him their pretence 
is glaring. If they do not stick up for him they 
feel that they are being faithless to a poet who still 
stands in need of all the propagandists he can get. 
It is not easy to face the truth about him even in the 
solitude of one's own chamber. But, by heaven, 
he is a dull man ! 

" There was a boy " (as Wordsworth would him- 
self begin) who at one time used nightly to dine in 
hall under a large oil-painting of the poet. In this 
painting Wordsworth was represented sitting on a 
rock against a landscape background which was an 
agreeable and symbolical blend of wildness and tran- 
quillity. The poet was clad in broadcloth; he held 
a book in his hand; his face was smooth and pink; 
and his mild eye surveyed the spectator as though 
the latter were a lamb about to receive a pat of the 
hand and his blessing. There he sat, meditative and 
benevolent, while the soup gave place to the fish 
and the fish to the beef; and when one had drained 
off the last dregs of one's beer one went off still 
conscious of that meditative and benevolent eye. 
It became almost maddening. Every other great 
English poet had something fascinating about him. 
Even Milton, in spite of certain unsociable qualities, 
had a certain attractive force, a touch of the virulent, 
and the scars of suffering. But this Wordsworth! 
His genuine philanthropy was unquestionable. His 
portrait might, one thought, be that of a pioneer of 

191 



Books in General 

the Anti-Slave Trade Agitation, or an inventor of 
Sunday Schools, or an endower of Bands of Hope. 
But not a poet; oh, not a poet! 

So it is with all his portraits. Professor Harper 
gives a selection of them. Always the sage is a 
bland and upright man; the mens conscia recti typi- 
fied. But never a sign of eloquence or fire; of the 
magnificent oratory of his great passages, of the 
music and profound tenderness which are so profuse 
in his poetry. Not a sign of stress; not a mark of 
any but the most complacent vicarage thought; no 
passion, no enthusiasm, no challenge, and no re- 
sponse. It is not to be explained away, as Professor 
Harper attempts to explain it away, by saying that 
the myth of " Daddy Wordsworth " (as FitzGerald 
called him) is based on a disproportionate view of 
his life. Professor Harper thinks that far too little 
attention has been paid to his early revolutionary 
period, when the ideals of the French Revolution 
gripped him, and far too much to his later period 
of orthodoxy and respectability. Professor Harper 
himself attempts to redress the balance. He gives 
as full an account as he can of the earlier Words- 
worth and of his relations with Revolutionary 
France. But, as Wordsworth's French friends 
would have said (provided they were not ashamed 
of using such a worn-out tag) plus qa change plus 
c'est la meme chose. The early Wordsworth may 
have been a different being; but Professor Harper 
192 



Wordsworth's Personal Dullness 

certainly does not prove that he was. From birth 
to death in this biography he appears as the same 
high-minded, staid, sober, solemn monument. He 
joined in the Revolution not so much a " kid-glove 
revolutionary " as a woollen-glove and warm com- 
forter revolutionary. Had he stayed in France he 
might have made even the Terror respectable. 

On myself and on others Wordsworth's portraits 
and his biographies always leave this sort of impres- 
sion: the impression of an old bore to whom one 
would not be rude simply and solely because one 
would not willingly hurt the feelings of a person so 
worthy. And then one goes back to his poetry — 
and his prose — and hears a voice of almost unsur- 
passed grandeur speaking the deepest of one's un- 
expressed thoughts, appealing to and drawing out 
all the divinest powers in man's nature. Of his 
greatness surely no rational and unbiassed being 
could entertain the slightest doubt. He is not so 
popular or so frequently read as some poets, and that 
is not difficult to explain. His absence of humour, 
or an equivalent vivacity, is not in itself an explana- 
tion; but the accompanying general absence of any 
luxurious appeal to the senses is. He speaks direct 
to the labouring intellect and the sensitive heart; 
and the enjoyment of him, if great, Is usually enjoy- 
ment of the austerer kind, like mountain-climbing. 
There is nothing soft or enervating or luxurious 
which can make reading him an aesthetic debauch. 

193 



Books in General 

He does not often sing to a tune which gives one 
pleasure even if one does not attend to the words. 
Without being in the least obscure he demands an 
effort from the reader parallel to his own. That, at 
least as much as the tediousness of many of his writ- 
ings (and his irritating classification of them), is the 
reason of his comparative lack of popularity. 
But . . . 



194 



Henry James's Obscurity 

HENRY JAMES'S last work was his essay 
on Rupert Brooke, written as an introduc- 
tion to Letters from America. Mr. 
James's essay is a personal appreciation, and not in 
any way a biographical memoir. Such a memoir, 
by another hand, will follow. Mr. James left un- 
finished two novels, and a third volume of the series 
begun with A Small Boy and Others and Notes of a 
Son and Brother. 

Presumably the public (which might well make 
a start with the short stories of which Mr. Seeker 
has already published eight half-crown volumes, 
very pleasant to the eye) will at last begin to buy 
James's novels. They have certainly not bought 
them in the past. He was, in critical circles, al- 
most universally recognized as one of the three or 
four greatest of English writers living a week ago. 
But some of his books had not even gone into a 
second edition. He was intermittently talked about 
in the Press. Fifteen years or so ago he had a 
boom of the sort; then there was a period of com- 
parative newspaper obscurity; in the last three or 
four years he suddenly and silently, like a star ap- 
pearing from behind a cloud, took his unchallenged 

195 



Books in General 

place In the firmament as one of the established 
great. But he was not widely read. Daisy Miller, 
ever so many years ago, had a fairly general suc- 
cess; The Golden Bowl, also, I should think, sold 
well. But many people who paid lip homage to 
him were very unfamiliar with his work. 

In no case would a man with his interests, his 
approach, his subtlety and avoidance of the grosser 
excitements, his restraint and delicacy, have sold by 
the hundred thousand. But his appeal was still fur- 
ther limited by the legend of his style. I remember 
reading an old novel written in the days when Rob- 
ert Browning was an Incomprehensible studied by a 
Cult. The heroine of it gave herself away rather 
by remarking, "Oh, Mr. Browning! I've never 
been able to understand a single thing that he has 
written. That Is why I have never tried." One 
feels that there were persons who were In the same 
position as towards Henry James. They had 
heard that he was a hard nut to crack; they had 
seen perhaps — it was always a great temptation 
to a reviewer to extract — specimens of his more 
elaborate discursions, complicated arabesques of 
sentences, parenthesis after parenthesis wandering 
from comma to comma like barbed wire tangled 
around Its supports. And they thought therefore 
that he was an obscure eclectic as difficult as Jacob 
Behmen or Swedenborg and lacking their excuse of 
religious Inspiration. Certainly he was sometimes 
196 



Henry James's Obscurity 

difficult. But it was a unique kind of obscurity. 
There is an obscurity produced when a man, eagerly 
tumbling along an argument, writes down only a 
sort of fitful shorthand, a language which leaves 
things out and which resembles the stray pieces of 
disconnected paper in gutter or hedge which merely 
indicate the course that the runner has taken. There 
is another and commoner kind of obscurity of speech 
which derives from mistiness of mind; for a man 
cannot write clearly down what he does not clearly 
think. And there is a kind of obscurity which is 
produced by mere inaptitude for writing: the awk- 
wardness of the cow handling a rifle. James's ob- 
scurity was the direct product of his passion for 
clarity. He detested the slipshod sentence which, 
compact as it may look as a piece of grammar, is a 
mere pot-shot as a piece of representation. He 
wanted to make no statement which did not embody 
precisely what he wanted to say; what, that is to say, 
he saw as Truth. He would have taken, for ex- 
ample, tliat last sentence of mine and, endeavouring 
to give it a more exact shape, have made of it some- 
thing like the following: 

" He wanted, when, that is, he experienced any- 
thing so definite or, shall we put it, so positively 
energetic, as a want, to make no statement, none at 
any rate which might be taken by even the least per- 
ceptive of his hearers as a delivered, and, as it were, 
final testimony of his reaction to things as he saw 

197 



Books in General 

them, which did not precisely embody what he 
wanted (when, once more, he coherently desired 
anything, as we have it, " higher " than the elemen- 
tary physical) to say; what, that is to say, he saw, 
at the moment of speech, be it understood, for the 
eye of the watcher changes, as what, in the absence 
of a happier name, it has pleased us to ennoble with 
the majestic name of Truth." 

I don't suggest that I myself have added anything 
to my own sentence by this addition of the pomp 
and circumstance of parenthesis and circumlocution. 
I have merely turned a short platitude into a long 
one. But it may serve to show the method by which 
Henry James arrived at his more tortuous pages. 
The method has its disadvantages. The man who 
employs it is sometimes like a man working with a 
pickaxe in a cave. The more he digs away the 
larger the unattacked expanse which invites his 
strength; or, as one might say, the bigger the hole 
he is in. But when this method is employed by a 
man with the analytical powers, the sensitiveness to 
fine shades, material and spiritual, of Henry James, 
the result is a '* product " (the kind of word that 
James would always have put in actual or implied 
inverted commas) which never stales and from 
which one gets more and more enjoyment each time 
one reads. In the last resort novels live by the 
richness of their detail; and James's detail is ex- 
quisite and inexhaustible. 
198 



Henry James's Obscurity 

Few modern writers have exercised so strong 
an influence over those who have surrendered them- 
selves to him. He is, I should say, more infectious 
than any writer since (what a strange collocation!) 
Lord Macaulay. A man with a formed style can 
usually read and enjoy Carlyle, Jeremy Taylor, de 
Quincey, or George Meredith without showing the 
least tendency (unless deliberate) to imitate them. 
But when one has (I don't speak only for myself) 
been reading James one finds for a time that one is 
tempted to write even one's private letters in a style 
whicIT shows plainly that one has set him as a seal 
upon one's arm. Even now, when I am merely 
thinking about him, I feel the pressure of that stern 
artistic conscience, and can only with an effort resist 
the Hemand that I should guard myself here, qualify 
myself here, and elucidate myself there. He was 
irresistible, like one of those stammerers or persons 
with other attractive or unattractive vocal idiosyn- 
crasies whom one cannot help imitating when one is 
with them. A person of any force gets through 
this and the permanent effect of a subjugation to 
James was always good. A too marked echo of him 
would be painful: but his example was salutary. It 
may be possible to grumble with him for this and 
that. He did write mainly about persons with in- 
comes (though these also are God's creatures) ; he 
did occasionally behave (as Mr. Wells very wittily 
put it) like a hippopotamus picking up a pea; and 
he did annoy some enthusiasts by refusing to place 

199 



Books in General 

his pen habitually at the service of the Great Forces 
of Our Time and other things whose capital impor- 
tance is of custom indicated by capital letters. But 
in an age of sloppy writing he stood for accuracy 
of craftmanship; and even men whose subjects are 
Invisible Exports of the Parthenogenesis of Plants 
might learn from him how to use to more advantage 
their intellects and their pens. 



200 



The "Ring" in the 
Bookselling Trade 



A BIBLIOPHILE writes the following com- 
plaint: "At the recent sale of Swinburne's 
library, certain lots, chiefly signed presen- 
tation copies, fetched extravagantly high prices. 
But the outsider is generally puzzled at the extreme 
variation in the prices, a variation which passing 
fashions in taste do not explain. There is an expla- 
nation, as one would-be purchaser was made some- 
what rudely aware. He wanted a book by a modern 
poet, a poet of delicate talent and little recognition; 
and he asked a bookseller to bid for the lot. He 
was willing to spend between ten and thirteen shill- 
ings on it. The agent who was to bid arrived late, 
and another bookseller bought the lot for five shill- 
ings. So the would-be purchaser asked his book- 
seller to approach the man who had bought the lot, 
and find out if he would sell it. The book was cheap 
at five and would be rather dear at ten shillings. 
When approached, the purchaser Informed his col- 
league that ' he had had to pay a good deal more 
for the lot than the price given in the rooms, and 
that he could not part with it for less than eighteen 
shillings.' Such are the blessings of the ' ring ' at 
Sotheby's. 

20I 



Books in General 

" The ring consists of some of the largest and 
best-known members of the bookselling trade — all 
honest men — and their plan is this: they never bid 
against each other, except for show; lots go at small 
prices, thus robbing owners and executors of their 
right profit; and subsequently these cheap lots are 
put up again and resold among the members of the 
ring. The auctioneers can, of course, do nothing to 
stop the practice — and it is as legal as it is dishon- 
ourable. At times an outsider with a big banking 
account gives the ring a good deal of trouble; but 
It has survived all private attacks, and is likely to — 
though a private buyer with a confident manner and 
a quick power of decision can occasionally get a great 
deal of amusement by running lots up, and so forcing 
the ring to pay exorbitant prices for things they do 
not want." 

It Is true. There exists among the second-hand 
booksellers precisely such a ring as gave rise to 
so much discussion a few years ago when the scandal 
of the art-dealers' " knock-out " was widely dis- 
cussed. For some time I myself have been trying 
to get Information about it. But It is not easy. 
You can find out from booksellers who are not in 
the ring (few of these lone wolves are important) 
who the booksellers are who are in the ring, but 
that is about all. But the method is simple. The 
attendance at book sales is not large. Private col- 
lectors are lazy people; it is not now fashionable — 
202 



The "Ring" in the Bookselling Trade 

as it was in the Duke of Roxburghe's day — for the 
Old NobiUty to crowd the salerooms, bidding des- 
perately amid groans of anguish and cheers of tri- 
umph. The result is that very often one will attend 
a sale and be the only private person there, and it is 
a matter of chance (especially when the sale is a 
comparatively small one) whether any one at all 
is there except the members of the ring. The ring, 
pro forma, will run a book up to about a third of 
its value and leave it at that. At the close of the 
proceedings its members will adjourn somewhere — 
I don't know where, but let us say a back room in 
the Sharing Cross Road — and hold a " knock-out " 
auction of the books they have bought. The differ- 
ence between the sums paid here and the sums paid 
at Sotheby's or Hodgson's will be pooled and di- 
vided, so as to equalize the spoil; and the owners of 
the libraries sold will have got only, perhaps, a half 
of what they really ought to have got considering the 
prices that the ultimate purchasers are willing to 
pay. 

But I don't see what is to be done about It. 
As my correspondent remarks, the auctioneers can't 
stop it. They also must suffer as their work is done 
on a commission basis. It must not be assumed 
that all the booksellers like the system, but the 
minority cannot help themselves. I remember that 
one very well known bookseller, now dead, tried for 
several years to keep out of it; but in the end, by 

203 



Books in General 

co-ordinated bidding against him, he was forced in. 
There the thing is; the dealers find it profitable; it 
is not easy to keep out of it unless you are a prince 
of the trade, with rich customers and great resources, 
or a person with special knowledge who is after a 
special kind of book and will be let alone; and 
there is no short cut to reform. How can Parlia- 
ment interfere? If one dealer who buys a book 
can sell it to another after the sale, how can six 
or a dozen dealers be prevented from exchanging 
their purchases similarly. It would be all very well 
to make the " knock-out " illegal, but how many 
does it take to make a ring and how many detectives 
could be spared? The only conceivable remedy is 
for persons who habitually buy old books to make a 
point (when the war is over and they are released 
from their present occupations) of turning up at the 
salerooms and bidding against the pros. Even at 
that the remedy would only be eflicacious as long as 
it was actively applied. It might be worth a guinea 
a box, but you would have to take a box every day; 
there would be no permanent cure. Directly the 
strangers slacked off again the ring and the " knock- 
out " would revive, and my unfortunate friend (for 
I presume that the disconsolate buyer he refers to 
is himself) would have once more to pay for his 
books much more than the price recorded at the 
rooms. " There is no cure for this disease," as 
Mr. Belloc's poem puts It, unless auction-frequenting 
again becomes a popular form of amusement. 
204 



The ''Ring" in the Bookselling Trade 

But, If I may digress, I must say that, for per- 
sons of a bookish turn of mind, there is nothing 
more amusing than an occasional visit to WelHng- 
ton Street or Chancery Lane. I shouldn't care to 
do it every day; the combined mustiness of books 
and booksellers is a bit overpowering. But is is ex- 
citing to bid occasionally, and the books that come 
into the London auction-rooms are of such quality 
that sometimes you might almost as well go to 
Sotheby's as to the Exhibition Rooms (now shut up 
so as to pay for two minutes of the war) of the 
British Museum. The bindings that great collectors 
put on their books are in themselves wonderful. 
And the booksellers, rich and poor, glossy and seedy, 
as they nod to the rostrum and paw the goods, are a 
sight to which only Balzac could do justice. They 
all wear looks of settled gloom as though they were 
on the verge of bankruptcy; they all (if one speaks 
to them) swear that " it is impossible to get any- 
thing to-day as everything is going so dear"; and 
they all have a sovereign indifference to everything 
but the commercial value of the books they deal in. 
I say all: there are exceptions; but the crowd as a 
whole is utterly depressed and completely free from 
the remotest concern with literature. But possibly 
when they get in that back room somewhere and 
assess the margin between what executors have got 
for books and what they ought to have got for 
them, their morose countenances may brighten. For 
all I know, every " knock-out " auction may end with 

205 



Books in General 

the circulation of the punch-bowl, jolly songs, and 
toasts to the damnation of all the idiots who waste 
their money on rotten old books unfit to read and 
thereby keep in affluence a set of honest men who 
read the Daily Mail in the morning and never a 
line for the rest of the day. 



206 



Music-Hall Songs 



MR. WILLIAM ARCHER contributes to 
the Fortnightly an attack on the music- 
hall. He says that It Is the home of vul- 
garity and Inanity; that the audiences, as a rule, 
would enjoy much better stuff than they are given; 
and that " the music-hall seems to have killed a gen- 
uine vein of lyric faculty In the English people." 
With all that I don't think that any one but a poseur 
could disagree. Mr. Archer makes an extraordi- 
nary slip when he puts forward Sally in our Alley as 
a folk-product of which neither the composer nor 
the author Is known to fame : both words and music 
being by Henry Carey, who was scarcely an obscure 
person In his day and Is not entirely forgotten now. 
He concludes, too, with a somewhat vague sugges- 
tion of a remedy which has no bearing whatever 
upon the Improvement of music-hall songs, and which 
one suspects to spring from his perennial desire to 
induce the public to go and see Ibsen. But his case 
as a whole is irrefutable. The nation's songs since 
the Industrial revolution have been immeasurably 
worse than at any other time in Its history. They 
are almost all commercial products manufactured by 
half-wits. 

207 



Books in General 

Mr. Archer's case being so sound, it is all the 
more a pity that he overdoes it. It is true that 
almost all these songs are vile rubbish, and that 
the songs of the Villikins and his Dinah and Cham- 
pagne Charlie periods were even more fatuous than 
those of the present day. But it is exaggeration 
to say that 

" what is certain is that the whole music-hall move- 
ment has produced not one — literally not one — 
piece of verse that can rank as poetry of the humblest 
type, or even as a really clever bit of comic rhym- 
ing," 

for such songs turn up fairly frequently. Possibly 
Mr. Archer's horror of the " red-nosed comedian " 
prevents him from ever listening to his words : cer- 
tainly one gets from Mr. Archer's article the im- 
pression that the critic is only acquainted with a 
few of the most famous of music-halls songs. But 
although I heartily support his general case and 
would willingly consent to the execution of all music- 
hall managers and versifiers and most music-hall 
artists, I must protest that " really clever bits of 
comic rhyming " do turn up occasionally. 

I wish I had a better verbal memory. But I 
can at least refer Mr. Archer to a few songs of 
which, if he cares to spend a month in the Museum 
with old volumes of Francis, Day and Hunter's 
song-books and other collections, he can find the full 
208 



Music-Hail Songs 

words. For instance, there is Mr. Harry Lauder's 
It's Nice to get up in the Morning. As I remember 
them (and here and elsewhere I don't guarantee that 
my quotations are Hterally accurate) the words of 
the chorus are : 

Oh, it's nice to get up in the morning when the sun 
begins to shine, 

At four or jive or six o'clock in the good old summer 
time; 

^But when the snow is falling, and it's murky over- 
head, 

It's nice to get up in the morning — hut it's nicer 
to stay in bed. 

Of course the tune helped it. But it is quite well 
turned and it springs clean out of popular experience. 
It is folk-poetry even if the folk didn't write it. It 
is not the folk-poetry of the seventeenth century, but 
it is distinctly the folk-poetry of modern commercial 
and urban England. We sat upon the Baby on the 
Shore I'm not sure about; it didn't, I suspect, have 
a music-hall origin, though I do not know. But 
A Little Bit off the Top was quite comic in places; 
so were The Four Horse Charabanc, Right in the 
Middle of the Road, Whitewash, and 'E dunno 
where ' e are. I wish I could recall the words of the 
song which had a chorus beginning: 

More work for the undertaker. 

Another little job for the tombstone-maker ; 

209 



Books in General 

but even that high-spirited couplet shows their 
quality. These mock-tragic songs are often quite 
good. The best known was His Day's Work was 
done, which was undeniably a comic conception well 
carried out. Did Mr. Archer ever hear // it wasn't 
for the Houses in Between? The one fragment that 
sticks in my mind both dates it and shows that it was 
a " clever bit of comic rhyming " : 

// the weather had been finer 

You'd have seen the war in China — 

// it wasn't for the Houses in Between. 

And what about Waiting at the Church? — 

There was I waiting at the church, 

Waiting at the church. 

When I found he'd left me in the lurch. 

Lor' , how it did upset me! 

Then he sent me round a little note. 

Just a little note, 

This is what he wrote: 

Can't get away to marry you to-day — 

My wife won't let me." 

That seems to me a well-calculated chorus, and 
the clinch of the last two lines couldn't be beaten. 
But perhaps the austere Mr. Archer would think 
it debasing on the grounds that it led the audience 
to think lightly of bigamy. 

2IO 



Music-Hall Songs 

Bigamy Is one of the chief comic-song subjects. 
Vermin in one's bed, drunkenness, and the food 
in boarding-houses are the others. The " booze " 
songs are not, as a rule, as good as they should be. 
The only one I remember that was at all neat ran 
something like: 

First she had some marmalade, 

And then she had some jam, 
Then some dozen of oysters 

And then a plate of ham, 
A lobster and a crab or two 

And a pint of bottled beer, 
A little gin hot to settle the lot 

— And that's what made her queer. 

I certainly don't suggest that any of the songs 
I have quoted — and I'm certain that consultation 
with a few expert friends, now In Flanders, would 
bring better ones to light — are masterpieces. But 
I do think they are quite comic verse, and that If 
all music-hall songs were as well turned there would 
not be much ground for complaint. One does, that 
is, laugh occasionally at a music-hall, In spite of Mr. 
Archer. But, unhappily, of ninety-nine songs out 
of a hundred the words are too abysmal for any- 
thing, and the serious ones are almost invariably im- 
becile. I wonder, by the way, whether the music- 
hall authorities ever try to induce competent comic 
rhymers, known in other spheres, to turn out songs 

211 



Books in General 

for them? Probably not; they think the words 
don't matter. That they are mistaken (though the 
tunes count for most) is shown by the way that a 
song with good words succeeds with the audience. 
Even one ingenious line will often bring the house 
down. I remember the old song / can't change it. 
There was a stanza about a bride who appalled 
her bridegroom by taking herself to pieces, remov- 
ing a wig, a glass eye, a wooden arm, two wooden 
legs, etc. In the chorus the narrator suddenly de- 
scribed her as " 'Arf a woman and 'arf a tree," and 
this admirable if unrefined trope was the most suc- 
cessful thing of the year. But as I say, I largely 
agree with Mr. Archer. If only they would let me 
smoke in theatres I would never go near a music- 
hall again until the programmes were improved, and 
I imagine many other people are in the same boat. 



212 



More Music-Hail Songs 

How little do we know the consequences of 
our acts. " I say there is not a red Indian, 
hunting by Lake Winnipic, can quarrel 
with his squaw, but the whole world must smart for 
it: will not the price of beaver rise? It is a mathe- 
matical fact that the casting of this pebble from my 
hand alters the centre of gravity of the Universe." 
That was Carlyle's way of putting it. Somebody 
wrote a book of theatrical reminiscences: the book 
set Mr. William Archer pondering on the fatuity of 
music-halls; Mr. Archer's article made me try to 
remember comic fragments of music-hall songs; and 
my observations would appear, judging from the 
quantities of correspondence they have produced, to 
have tempted whole families to spend their evenings 
trying to recall the popular choruses of their youth. 

Numbers of them seem to have better memories 
than mine. Whole verses of More Work for the 
Undertaker (I think It was Mr. Dunville's song) 
reach me. The scheme may be Illustrated by one 
stanza : 

Sammy Snoozer laboured on the railway; 
His work he was very clever at! 

213 



Books in General 

Sammy one day was a-poUshing the metals 
With a lump of mouldy fat. 
Up come a runaway engine, 
Sa^nmy stood upon the track; 
He held out his arms, for he firmly believed 
He could push that locomotive back, 
(The drum: Boom! /) 

(Chorus) 

More work for the undertaker, 

Another little job for the tombstone-maker; 

At the local cemetery they've 

Been very very busy with a brand-new grave. 

For Snoozer's 

Snuffed it! 

I am afraid that I should have to grant Mr. 
Archer the verse: the second line, especially, cannot 
be called a model of good craftsmanship. But the 
chorus is very neat. It was varied with each verse. 
Another correspondent's specimen finishes with 
" For Frederick's fragments." 

I must bow to the correspondent who suggests 
that the success of the song about the bride with 
artificial limbs was at least as much due to lines 
he quotes as it was to " 'Arf a woman and 'arf a 
tree." His lines are: 

/ can't change her! 
TVo matter how I try, 
214 



More Music-Hall Songs 

But ril chop her up for firewood 
In the sweet by-and-by. 

An equally impolite chorus is that of Herbert 
Campbell's 'Blige a Lady which another corre- 
spondent sends. The conductor, on a rainy day, 
asked the inside males to give up a seat to a lady 
and go outside, and the reply was on the lines of 

Said /, '' Old chap, she may have my lap, 
But I don't get wet for her." 

That is very typical music-hall; and it will be ob- 
served that it gets its effect by sticking close, as 
Wordsworth advised, to the natural phraseology 
and sequence of everyday speech. 

Mr. Albert Chevalier, I admit, I did not mention, 
He has not been primarily a music-hall artist, and 
Mr. Archer himself made an exception of his songs. 
Some of Mr. Gus Elen's certainly might be quoted: 
e. g. 'E dunno where 'e are and What's the Use of 
looking out for Work? I am afraid that I am not 
sufficiently well informed to answer questions as to 
the sources of supply of modern music-hall songs. 
The only thing I have observed is that large num- 
bers of the worst ones are composed by persons 
whose names suggest that the use of the English 
language is with them rather an acquired than an 
inherited characteristic. How far the practice pre- 

215 



Books in General 

vails of a particular star employing a tame author to 
write the words of all his songs for him I do not 
know. I have never consciously met a writer of 
music-hall songs, though I did know one man who 
made two attempts to produce what he thought the 
right sort of commodity. He sent them to an en- 
trepreneur, but all his wit was wasted. The chorus 
of one song mentioned a well-known and much-ad- 
vertised comestible : this wouldn't do, as all the 
vendors of similar articles would be jealous and, pos- 
sibly, refuse to advertise any more on the pro- 
gramme. In the other song the author had had 
the misfortune to hit upon an idea which had been 
used before. His refrain was: 

And when the pie was opened 
The birds began to sing. 

But there was an old song with the same tail to it. 
It was a song about a pigeon-pie which was no better 
than it should be. This reminds me that in tabu- 
lating favourite music-hall subjects one should cer- 
tainly have mentioned bad smells. Throughout his- 
tory any reference to unpleasant smells has moved 
the Englishman to roars of laughter. Perhaps it 
is because we so thoroughly dislike them. I don't 
think that these odours take all nations in quite the 
same way: but travellers on the Continent are some- 
times tempted to think that most nations do not 
notice them so much as we do. 
216 



More Music-Hall Songs 

The music-hall versifier, usually feeble when 
funny, is certainly at his worst when serious. Such 
of the war-songs as I have heard are dreadful. 
Perhaps those I have not heard are better. Early 
in the war I was looking into a music-shop window 
in Upper Shaftesbury Avenue and saw two typical 
titles. One was Only a Bit of Khaki that Daddy 
wore at Mons, and the other was The Little Irish 
Red Cross Nurse. I did not dare to buy them, but 
I could not help admiring the ingenuity of the author 
of the second who had managed to work the peren- 
nial Irish Girl theme so neatly into the new subject. 
All music-hall poets seem to be obsessed by Irish 
girls. They will even work them into translations 
of foreign songs which do not mention them. Five 
or six years ago a German music-hall song which had 
nothing whatever to do with Irish girls was im- 
ported and became very popular here. The ideas 
of the original were largely preserved, but an Irish 
girl had to be stuck in. But quo, Musa, tendisf If 
I go on like this I shall end by agreeing with Mr. 
Archer. 



217 



Utopias 

I SAW recently a very entertaining article by Mr. 
Walter Lippman in the New Republic on the 
subject of Utopias. Mr. Lippman raised the 
question of why it was Utopias had gone out of 
fashion. Since Mr. Wells wrote his Modern 
Utopia no one has had a shot. 

It is, of course, not the longest period in human 
history which has gone without a new Utopia. As 
far as I know, nothing of the sort was constructed 
between the time of Plato and that of Sir Thomas 
More. Reasons might, no doubt, be discovered for 
this long lapse. The Romans were too realistic to 
bother about such things, and in the Middle Ages 
the only people who could write were priests, and 
they probably did not dare outline any other perfect 
society than that of the New Jerusalem. In fact, 
Utopias of any merit have until recently always been 
produced at long intervals: with the exception of 
Bacon's New Atlantis and Campanella's City of the 
Sun, which were, I think, published in the same year. 
The nineteenth century must have produced more 
imaginary states of this kind than all its predecessors 
put together. And if we stop constructing Utopias, 
this will happen not because we have ceased to 
218 



Utopias 

hanker after them, but because the complexities of 
civilization have become too unmanageable to handle. 
When the structures of society and industry were 
comparatively simple, a man could invent an ideal 
state which would not look too far removed from 
the states he knew. We can still go on dreaming 
of little paradises, such as that in Morris's News 
from Nowhere; but what it is difficult to do is to 
describe fully an imaginary community which is 
world-wide, or, at any rate, in contact with the whole 
world, which has to face the problems of race, and 
which has to take over from existing civilization our 
highly developed methods of manufacture and dis- 
tribution of labour. Mr. Wells did try to depict a 
state that might grow out of the existing order; 
but his picture is notably less complete than those 
of older writers. He could only hope to produce 
his effect by giving us a series of cinema glimpses 
of various aspects of life. Personally, I doubt 
whether any one else will even attempt the job. 

One could wish that somebody would make a 
thorough study of the principal Utopias that the 
mind of man has conceived. Such a study would 
offer many interesting paths to research. We might 
find out, for example, to how great an extent the 
Utopians of various ages and nations have been 
influenced (as Plato was conspicuously Influenced) 
by the transient conditions of their own time. For 
instance, the great variety of opinion which Utopians 

219 



Books in General 

have held with regard to the precious metals would 
be worth examination. Some have held them in 
great respect; others have vindictively suggested that 
they should be put to the basest possible uses. 
Again, how far has each writer of this kind been 
influenced by his predecessor? It can scarcely be 
supposed, for instance, that Campanella did not lift 
his communistic ideas bodily from Plato, or that Mr. 
Wells's class of Samurai owed nothing to the same 
inspiration. Sometimes one sees a quite minor and 
obviously personal idea lifted clean or adapted with 
slight alterations which make it all the more curious. 
For example, in More's Utopia brides and bride- 
grooms before marriage always inspected each other 
in a state of nature. It is to be presumed that More 
had some peculiar crank on this subject; for he men- 
tions the possibility of concealing deformities as 
though it were a common practice that should cer- 
tainly be guarded against by law. When we get to 
Bacon we find this odd idea copied, with the differ- 
ence that it is now the friends of the respective 
parties that make the examination. 

The endless queer details in Utopias would in 
themselves make such a study amusing. Plato's pas- 
sion to secure that no mother should know her own 
child; the preposterously exact account of the 
amount of money subscribed towards the foundation 
of the new state in Theodor Hertzka's Freeland; 
the wonderful battle between the fleets of, if I re- 
220 



Utopias 

member rightly, Abyssinia and Europe in the same 
book; the trains going two hundred miles an hour, 
so smoothly that people played billiards on them, in 
Mr. Wells's New World. I remember another 
Utopia, an obscure eighteenth-century one, in which 
persons who had committed murders were given the 
choice of being executed in honour or surviving in 
disgrace. If they chose death they were led to the 
scaffold amid universal applause, their names were 
inscribed upon rolls of honour, and their relatives 
were given fat jobs. Then, again, one could have 
a quite interesting chapter on the various literary 
devices by which authors have precipitated readers 
into their supposititious communities. More's in- 
troduction — with the bronzed and bearded seaman 
who went out with the companions of Columbus and 
was stranded on an unknown island — is as charm- 
ing as any. Later dodges have been more far- 
fetched. Mr. Wells's transferment to the twin- 
world of this one is very subtle; Edward Bellamy 
made his hero wake up after centuries in a room 
where he asked for Edith (his old fiancee) and was 
conveniently answered by another lady of the same 
name. I say nothing of the books which lie on the 
outskirts of Utopian literature, such as various gro- 
tesque Utopias and anti-Utopias and books like Lord 
Lytton's The Coming Race and W. H. Hudson's 
T^he Crystal Age, which last is, I believe, the only 
book on record which purports to have been written 
by a man who dies in the last chapter and describes 

221 



Books in General 

his own demise. And the practical attempts to set 
up working ideal communities — such as the Oneida 
community which developed into a prosperous 
" Mfg. Coy," — are another pleasant by-way. 

I think that with all the peculiarities of time and 
place, all the eccentricities of personal taste, and all 
the genuine varieties of ideals allowed for, a student 
of Comparative Utopianism would probably find 
that there was a good deal in the way of method and 
a very great deal in the way of aim that all Utopians 
have in common. Mr. Yeats once suggested that 
if we put together whatever the great poets have 
affirmed in their finest moments we should come as 
near as possible to an authoritative religion. In the 
same way, one feels that if one tabulated the ideals 
of the most successful writers of Utopias we should 
be able to extract, if not a residuum of agreed 
schemes, at least a common element of aspiration 
which we might fairly say represented the permanent 
ideals of the human race respecting the ordering of 
our life on earth. Really intelligent and altruistic 
men — and nobody without some intelligence and 
some altruism would bother to conceive a Utopia — 
have a tendency to dream the same sort of dreams. 
To take it on its negative side, no deviser of an ideal 
state, as far as I am aware, has proposed immense 
inequalities in the distribution of wealth, crowded 
and insanitary houses, child labour, wars of aggres- 
sion, or sweating. There are large numbers of in- 

222 



Utopias 

dlistrious and accurate people in this country and 
America who are hunting for subjects about which 
they can write volumes of " research." I wish one 
of them would write the book I suggest. 



223 



Charles II in English Verse 

I WAS talking to a man the other day about 
books that ought to have been written and 
have not been, when it occurred to me that 
somebody might publish a very amusing selection of 
panegyrics written on undeserving persons: say, the 
less immaculate of the English kings. I once 
thought of writing a life of Charles II, each chapter 
of which should be headed by an extract from some 
contemporary poem about him. The contrast be- 
tween the character and private and public actions 
of this monarch and the descriptions of him by lit- 
erary eulogists would have been illuminating. 
Gross flattery was the habit of the time. James the 
First was given, very unfairly as I think, the title of 
the British Solomon; and the Royal Martyr, who 
after all had some virtues very highly developed, 
was written of in terms which would have been ex- 
treme il applied to St. Francis of Assisi. But no 
one, not even his father, received such wholehearted 
praises as Charles II. 

His career as a recipient of them began early. 
When he was a child Francis Quarles's Divine 
Fancies were dedicated to him. The Dedication 
was headed: "To the Royal Bud of Majesty and 
224 



Charles II in English Verse 

Centre of our Hopes and Happiness, Charles," and 
began: "Illustrious Infant, Give me leave to ac- 
knowledge myself thy servant, ere thou knowest thy- 
self my Prince." The hope is held out that the 
illustrious infant will become " a most incomparable 
Prince, the firm pillar of our happiness and the 
future object of the world's wonder." Addressing 
then the boy's governess, Lady Dorset, Quarles be- 
comes even more rhapsodical : 

" Most excellent Lady, 

" You are the Star which stands over the Place 
where the Babe lies. By whose directions' light, 
I come from the East to present my Myrrh and 
Frankincense to the young child. Let not our Royal 
Joseph nor his princely Mary be afraid; there are 
no Herods here. We have all seen his Star in the 
East, and have rejoyced: our loyall hearts are full; 
for our eyes have seen him, in whom our Posterity 
shall be blessed. 

One could scarcely hope that Quarles's successors 
would quite live up to that. 

Dryden's poem on Charles's return to England 
is pitched a little lower. It certainly contains lines 
like 

The winds that never moderation knew, 
Afraid to blow too much, too faintly blew; 

225 



Books in General 

Or out of breath with joy would not enlarge 
Their straightened lungs . . . 

but that is a mere excess of avowed fanq^. When 
he wrote his Threnodia Augustalis on Charles's 
death, Dryden decidedly went one better. Perhaps 
it was that he had had twenty-five years of Charles's 
reign in which to appreciate fully the King's reverend 
qualities. He calls him 

That all-forgiving King 
The type of Him above, 

That unexhausted spring 
Of clemency and love. 

He apostrophizes the Muse of History: 

Be true, O Clio, to thy hero's name! 

But draw him strictly so 

That all who view the piece may know; 
He needs no trappings of fictitious fame. 
The load's too weighty. 

The anguished poet almost blasphemes against 
heaven for taking away so peerless a sovereign; 
until he remembers that " saints and angels " 
had been done out of Charles's company for so 
long that their turn might fairly be considered to 
have come. And there is the further consolation 
that a James has succeeded a Charles: 
226 



Charles II in English Verse 

Our Atlas fell indeed, but Hercules was near; 

or, as the Earl of Halifax put it, 

James is our Charles in all things else but name. 

Which Charles himself at least knew to be untrue. 

The Halifax extract comes out of another funeral 
poem On the Death of His Most Sacred Majesty. 
" Farewell," he cries, 

great Charles, monarch of blest renown. 
The best good man that ever fill'd a throne. 

He sketches Charles's career. He compares his 
exile to the banishment of David (an open crib 
from Astra Redux) and says of England that, 
when he came back, 

to his arms she fled 
And rested on his shoulders her fair bending head. 

He " Us from our foes and from ourselves did 
save." Only the almost inevitable comparison to 
the Almighty can do him justice : 

In Charles so good a man and King we see 
A double image of the deity. 
Oh! had he more resembled it! Oh, why 
Was he not still more like, and could not die? 

227 



Books in General 

What did become of Charles is suggested by " the 
Lord R " in a poem which appears in Miscellany 
Poems : 

Good kings are number' d with Immortal Gods 
When hence translated to the best Abodes, 
For Princes (truly great) can never die, 
They only lay aside Mortality. 

After which we are told that the deceased is in 
Olympus passing the nectar round; an occupation 
that should have suited him very well. 

Perhaps the suggestion will be adopted. Let 
some publisher with a series of anthologies get 
somebody to compile The Hundred Most Fulsome 
Poems in the English Language. It would be a 
more entertaining book than most. Very few ex- 
amples, I think, would be drawn from the last 
hundred years. As respects the monarchs, Great 
Elizabeth, the Great Jameses, the Great Charleses, 
Great William, Great Anne, and the Great Georges 
all got their full share of adulation. The break 
comes, I think, with George IV; since whose acces- 
sion we have lost the habit. Any one who should 
address his sovereign to-day in words like those ad- 
dressed to Charles II by his subjects (e. g. Great 
George, the planets tremble at thy nod) would be 
suspected of pulling the sovereign's leg. 



228 



The Most Durable Books 

THE question of what books one would take 
with one for a prolonged sojourn on a 
desert island is an old one. I thought it 
had lost its interest for me, as too remote. For I 
do not propose to live on a desert island; and if ever, 
by accident, I am cast upon the shore of one, cling- 
ing to a solitary plank, it is unlikely that I shall have 
spent the last hour on shipboard selecting mental 
food for a highly problematical future as a hermit. 
But a letter from a distressed man in the trenches 
revives my interest in the question. He complains 
that he very rapidly exhausts the books that are sent 
him; that few of them are much use as permanent 
companions; and that, as they take up room, he can 
carry only a small bundle of them about with him. 
He cannot make up his mind which ones to get and 
stick to; and he ends by putting the ancient poser to 
me: "What three" (it Is always three) "books 
would you rather have with you if you had to live 
on a desert Island? " He adds, with somewhat un- 
necessary bluntness, that he will not believe me if I 
say that one of them would be the Bible. 

I suppose there must be some definition of what a 
book — what one book — is. Otherwise one's first 
impulse Is to demand, as the companions of solitude, 

229 



Books in General 

the Encyclopedia Britannica, the Dictionary of Nat- 
ional Biography, and the Oxford English Dictionary 
— say some hundred and twenty volumes in all. 
With these one could spend a fairly long life in 
retreat without ever reading the same page twice. 
One might even read with a definite scheme which 
v/ould give one the semblance of systematic inquiry 
united with a happy unexpectedness of route. Sup- 
pose, for example, one were to start each day from 
something one had seen in the morning. A boa- 
constrictor, for instance. Having twisted its neck 
and left it for dead — castaways are very powerful 
fellows — one would go home to the old hut and 
refer to Boa in the Encyclopedia. Having learnt 
all about its anatomy, progenitiveness, and habitats, 
one would then refer to the Oxford Dictionary for 
the derivation of its name. Underneath the phil- 
ological discourse would be quotations from authors 
who had referred to the beast or to its feathery 
similitude. The swift advent of the tropic night 
would find one still immersed in the D.N.B. lives of 
these authors. On a large rock outside one would 
keep, with a charred stick, a list of the objects al- 
ready dealt with; once in a way perhaps, for senti- 
ment's sake, one would start from an old word again 
and revive memories of the Boa Trail. A person 
of simple tastes, granted the island produced enough 
goats and not too many constrictors, might well 
spend in this way a life as contented as Horace's. 
But to select those three books would be cheating. 
230 



The Most Durable Books 

One might fairly suggest, in such a connexion, that 
a book is either ( i ) any single coherent work by 
one author, or two in collaboration; or (2) any 
series of works which either has been, or might rea- 
sonably be expected to be, published in a single vol- 
ume. The edition for island use would not, how- 
ever, necessarily be a one-volume edition. This 
rules out these distended works of reference, whilst 
letting in every single piece of creative literature that 
exists. There may seem to be an unfair discrimina- 
tion between author and author, the poets, especially, 
as a body, being at a great advantage over the novel- 
ists; but if novelists will be so verbose they must 
suffer for it. What, then, would one's three books 
be? 

I can think of a good many books that I have 
not read and that I hope to enjoy reading. There 
is The Life of John Buncle, there is Old Mortality, 
there is Hard Times, there is Tom Paine's Rights 
of Man, there is Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity — 
and I am imperfectly acquainted with the works of 
Ben Jonson and Beaumont and Fletcher. (I have 
also not read Ordeal by Battle, and I don't intend 
to.) But the mere fact that one has not read a 
work which one knows to be interesting is not enough 
to qualify it. It would be enough if one were pro- 
posing to be marooned for a fortnight or three weeks 
and then taken off the island by " willing hands "; 
but the books one wants for a residence of many 

231 



Books in General 

years are books one is sufficiently familiar with to be 
certain that they will not grow stale at the fifty-fifth 
reading. 

Well, Gibbon is a large and a very long book. 
I have been through it once, and I am pretty sure 
I shall do so again. But after that I suspect that 
the passages with pencil-marks beside them will sat- 
isfy me. I certainly could not, just after finishing 
it, recommence it at once, as Lord Randolph 
Churchill used to do, or make a practice of dipping 
into it daily. Great as it is, it is not sufficiently 
varied or sufficiently human. For perpetual refer- 
ence no general history, I think, would do ; one must 
have something more of the flavour of everyday 
humanity in it. And every mood and every kind 
of character must be represented. Though the 
books may supplement one another, one finds one's 
choice growing at once very narrow. Even Horace 
Walpole's Letters or Saint-Simon's Memoirs would 
pall — at any rate on me. Shakespeare will do ; but 
I cannot personally think of anything which, for me, 
would contest the other places with Boswell and 
Rabelais, unless it were Morte d' Arthur. 

There are people, no doubt, who would take Don 
Quixote or Montaigne. One man I know thinks 
that Tristram Shandy would go with him. But 
Sterne is too short; one would get to know him by 
heart in a month or two. Robinson Crusoe would 
232 



The Most Durable Books 

have obvious advantages, especially in an illustrated 
edition — which would provide one with useful 
models when one was cutting out one's garments. 
But I think I should take the three I have mentioned 
— unless, indeed, I approached the matter from 
quite a different angle. There is a strong case for 
taking a selection of the more morose and bewil- 
dered modern novels — say La Ctiree, Le Paradis 
des Dames, and L'Assommoir, or a judicious selec- 
tion from Artzybascheff, Mr. Cannan, and Mr. 
D. H. Lawrence. For these would do a great deal 
to reconcile one to one's lonely lot. Whenever one 
was regretting the world of men one would find an 
everflowing spring of consolation in them. " After 
all," one would say, after each agued page, " there 
is a good deal to be said for a desert island." 



^32 



The Worst Style in the 
World 

THE word " euphuism " Is commonly em- 
ployed: it is also commonly confused with 
" euphemism." The thing is very prop- 
erly condemned, and the book that gave it its name 
is usually condemned with it. But it is probable that 
John Lyly's Euphues has frequently been abused by 
persons who have never opened it. At any rate, 
confessions of having read it are few, and have 
usually proceeded from the small minority who have 
found merit in the book. It is very interesting, 
therefore, to see that Messrs. Croll and Clemons 
have just published, through Routledge, a new edi- 
tion, fully annotated. A generation unfamiliar with 
it will have a chance of reassessing it. 

The work is in two parts. Euphues: The 
Anatomy of Wit was first published in 1578; 
Euphues and his England in 1580. How imme- 
diately popular it was is shown by the fact that (my 
authority is Mr. Arundell Esdaile's Bibliography of 
English Tales and Romances) four editions of the 
first part, three of the second, and then at least 
seventeen editions of both parts together were pub- 
234 



The Worst Style in the World 

lished In fifty-eight years. (His name, incidentally, 
is spelt on various title-pages Lylly, Lyly, Lylie, 
Lilie, Lyllie, and Lily: a diversity worthy of 
" Shakspear.") For a time almost everybody with 
any pretensions talked and wrote euphuism, very 
often employing Lyly's fantastic alliterations, anti- 
theses, and superfluous imagery without the content 
of sense that Lyly always had. Some writers openly 
ridiculed it. Shakespeare and Jonson made sport 
with euphuistic characters, and Sidney (who, I think, 
did not entirely escape the influence) ridiculed this 

Talking of beasts, birds, fishes, flies. 
Playing with words and idle similes. 

But the development of English prose was sensibly 
changed by it, and its effect may be traced in the 
prose of Donne, Taylor, and Browne. The book 
itself, however, like all extravagantly mannered 
books, had its slump in the end. Early in James I's 
reign the wider public seems to have turned away 
from it, and in 1632, E. Blount, the publisher, pref- 
acing an edition of Lyly's plays, referred to him 
as a forgotten poet whose grave he was digging up. 
Blount's own language is a terrible example of what 
Euphuism may come to. He calls his author " a 
Lilly growing in a Grove of Lawrels " : 

" These Papers of his, lay like dead Lawrels in a 
Churchyard; But I have gathered the scattered 

235 



Books in General 

branches up, and by a Charme (gotten from Apollo) 
made them greene againe, and set up as Epitaphes 
to his Memory. A sinne it were to suffer these 
Rare Monuments of wit, to lie covered with Dust, 
and a shame, such conceipted Comedies, should be 
acted by none but wormes." 

From 1636 to 1868, when the late Professor Arber 
(a man whose memory has not been sufficiently 
honoured) published his edition in the " English 
Reprints," Euphues never appeared again, save in 
two brief eighteenth-century adaptations. For al- 
most a hundred years his names was never men- 
tioned; Eilly the astrologer was much better known. 
Most eighteenth- and nineteenth-century critics dis- 
missed him as a man who, in Sir Walter Scott's 
words, deformed his works " by the most unnatural 
affectation that ever disgraced a printed page." 
One of the few exceptions was Charles Kingsley, 
who in Westward Ho! attacks Lyly's critics with 
tremendous enthusiasm : 

" I shall only answer by asking. Have they ever 
read It? For If they have done so, I pity them 
if they have not found it, In spite of occasional 
tediousness and pedantry, as brave, righteous, and 
pious a book as man need look Into; and wish for 
no better proof of the nobleness and virtue of the 
Elizabethan age than the fact that Euphues and the 
Arcadia were the two popular romances of the day." 

Turning at this stage, on a sudden Impulse, to my 
236 



The Worst Style in the World 

Encyclopaedia, to see whether sense Is talked about 
Lyly there, I find that the article on him Is by Mrs. 
Humphry Ward. Life is full of surprises. 

The truth of the matter Is that everybody is right, 
except those who do not trouble to read the book. 
Kingsley is perfectly correct; It would be difficult to 
find a book of the time finer in feeling or inspired 
by higher conceptions of conduct. Lyly Is as full 
of common sense as of refinement; and the fact that 
he drew much of his discourses on education and 
religion from other writers does not diminish the 
impression made by his attitude to life. His narra- 
tive does not come to much; most of his space Is 
occupied by harangues, debates, treatises, and let- 
ters; his Neapolitan and English love-stories move 
at a snail's pace. But — his first discussion, by the 
way, is on heredity and environment which, with 
startling modernity, he calls Nature and Nurture — 
he usually argues about things of perennial Interest, 
and always with subtlety, delicacy, and an insight 
into the human heart. Still, Sir Walter Scott really 
was not exaggerating the monstrosity — though it 
is not uniformly monstrous — of his style. It takes 
some patience to put up with the construction of his 
sentences and his recurrent bunches of similes in 
order to follow his argument. On the second page 
you fall plump into this sentence : 

" The freshest colours soonest fade, the keenest 
Rasor soonest tourneth his edge, the finest cloth is 

237 



Books in General 

soonest eaten with the Moathes, and the Cambricke 
sooner stayned than the course Canvas: which ap- 
peared well in this Eupliues, whose wit beeing like 
waxe, apt to receive any impression, and bearing 
the head in his own hande, either to use the rayne or 
the spurre, disdayning counsaile, leaving his country, 
loathing his old acquaintance, thought either by wit 
to obteyne some conquest, or by shame to abyde 
some conflict, who preferring fancy before friends, 
and this present humor, before honour to come, laid 
reason in water being too salt for his tast, and fol- 
lowed unbridaled affection, most pleasant for his 
tooth." 

The mania for balance and alliteration is shown 
here, but not the equally characteristic passion for 
piling animals and plants, mainly out of Pliny, into 
mounds of comparisons. They are most tolerable 
when the statements made are least verifiable. 
Here are two specimens: 

" The filthy Sow when she is sicke, eateth the 
Sea-Crab, and is immediately recured: the Torteyse 
having tasted the Viper, sucketh Origanum and is 
quickly revived: the Beare ready to pine licketh up 
the Ants and is recovered: the Dog having surfetted 
to procure his vomitte, eateth grasse and findeth 
remedy: the Hart beein perced with the dart, run- 
neth out of hand to the hearb Dicbamim, and is 
healed." 
238 



The Worst Style in the World 

" Then good Euphues let the falling out of 
friendes be a renewing of affection, that in this we 
may resemble the bones of the Lyon, which lying 
stil and not moved begin to rot, but being stricken 
one against another break out like fire, and wax 
greene." 

Yet sometimes he will conclude a paragraph of such 
abnormalities with a short, humorous, or pathetic 
sentence which is most effective; and even sentences 
bearing the evident marks of his style sometimes 
move one strongly in their context. I may quote 
such sentences as Lucilla's two complaints: "But 
I would to God Euphues would repair hither that 
the sight of him might mitigate some part of my 
martyrdome," and the extremely sibilant but musical 
" O my Euphues, lyttle dost thou knowe the sodeyn 
sorrowe that I susteine for thy sweete sake." What 
a really judicious critic would do would be to ridicule 
the style and admire the book. 



239 



The Reconstruction of 
Orthography 

RECONSTRUCTION Is a blessed word, and 
very comprehensive : but I doubt whether 
the Government, when it estabhshed the 
Reconstruction Committee, anticipated that it would 
be asked to consider the problem of Spelling Re- 
form. The Simplified Spelling Society, however, 
has sent it a memorial urging that " the reform of 
English spelling is eminently one that merits the 
practical consideration of the Committee." The 
signatories include a number of scientific and other 
professors, scores of teachers, and a tail composed 
of " men of business, men of letters, editors, etc." 
The editors do not include any man who edits a 
London daily or a literary weekly, though the direc- 
tive minds of the Lady's Realm and the Ardrossan 
and Saltcoats Herald are in the movement; and the 
only " men of letters " are Messrs. William Archer, 
H. G. Wells, Eden Phillpotts, T. Seccombe (at 
whom I am surprised), and a few persons who 
combine authorship with business or with " etc," 
One did not want this piece of negative evidence to 
convince one that authors, as a body, will fight 
Simplifyd Speling to the last mute k. The memo- 
240 



The Reconstruction of Orthography 

rial makes the usual points about saving children's 
time, facilitating the acquisition of foreign langu- 
ages, lightening the work of teaching defective chil- 
dren, and assisting aliens who are acquiring our 
tongue. We are also told that " the demand for a 
rational spelling may be compared to that for deci- 
malizing our coinage and our weights and meas- 
ures." 

This comparison seems to me very misleading, 
if by decimalization is meant the introduction of the 
Continental metric system. For this latter is uni- 
form in various countries, whereas the reform sug- 
gested by the Simplified Spelling Society would do 
nothing to approximate the sound-values of our let- 
ters to those of letters in foreign tongues. Cosmo- 
politan systems have been proposed, very complex 
and full of odd new letters; but this Society's sugges- 
tions, whilst eliminating some difficulties for the 
foreigner, would leave English just as difllicult for a 
Frenchman to pronounce as French is for an English- 
man. Take the phrase (I find it here) "A Ferst 
Reeder in Simplifyd Speling." A Frenchman 
would still mispronounce it. If he wished to indi- 
cate those sounds in the French way he would write 
(I am not a phonetician) something like " E Foeust," 
etc. So the Society had better not pitch its promises 
too high. This, nevertheless, remains a minor point. 
The chief considerations undoubtedly are the do- 
mestic effects of this piece of Reconstruction. 

241 



Books in General 

It sounds all very simple and convincing when 
people say: " Our spoken language has diverged 
from our written language : let our written language 
be made the same as our spoken language." But 
directly you go into the matter you find that the 
difficulties are enormous. That we have no one 
spoken language is a commonplace. Our speech 
varies from fashion to fashion and from locality to 
locality. " Educated " English at present has an 
increasing Cockney element in it. The common 
" cultured " pronunciation of " No," for instance, 
embodies an " o " sound which is anything but pure. 
Many rustics, however, still pronounce it with a good 
broad vowel. Even the spelling reformers do not 
agree about words. A. J. Ellis thought the " r " 
at the end of "proper" was still there; Sweet 
thought it had disappeared. As a matter of fact; 
it is both there and not there: in some classes and 
parts it is pronounced, in some it is not. And it is 
quite possible that it will become universal again. 

This gets us on to the question of change in time. 
The Reformers can be met both ways. If it be 
argued that phonetic spelling fixes pronunciation, 
why have we abandoned the old pronunciation of 
words once phonetically spelt? Shakespeare pro- 
nounced the initial " k " in " know " and '* knee." 
We have dropped it out. And we have no guaran- 
tee that spelling these words according to our present 
slack pronunciation would not be followed by an- 
242 



The Reconstruction of Orthography 

other divergence. The history of the word " sea " 
is odd. In the Middle Ages it was spelt " see " and 
pronounced " say." In Tudor times the spelling 
was altered to " sea " in order to make the spelling 
correspond to the sound (the same as that in 
"great"). We have reached a pronunciation 
which the original spelling would have correctly rep- 
resented! If it be argued that spelling does not 
fix pronunciation, the case for the reform is seriously 
weakened. The truth of the matter is that nothing 
can fix a pronunciation, but that the written word, 
especially in an age of universal literacy, does exer- 
cise a pull. And that pull can as well be exercised 
by our present spellings as by new ones. I think it 
was Titus Oates who went to the scaffold, or some- 
where, crying "Lard! Lard!" Had he been a 
spelling reformer he would have quite unnecessarily 
assimilated the spelling of " lord " with that of the 
name of the white stuff they keep in bladders: a 
distinct loss to the language. Mr. Murison, in the 
Cambridge History of Literature, points out that the 
word "kiln" was originally pronounced as spelt; 
then for some time the " n " was dropped; then the 
old pronunciation returned. The same thing hap- 
pened to words containing the diphthong " oi." 
" Join " and " oil " were, in Middle English, pro- 
nounced as they are now. But for centuries men 
called them " jine " and " He," a habit that still 
persists amongst many of the most eager supporters 
of Spelling Reform. " H's " were dropped whole- 

243 



Books in General 

sale and then picked up again. We never know, 
in fact, whether we shall not return to an old way 
of speech; and we might as well do that as diverge 
from an old way of writing. 

The great consolation of conservatives in this 
matter is the length of time during which the en- 
thusiasts have continuously failed to bring about a 
change. This is the oldest of the Campaigns. It 
was already old when in 1585 a book was published 
with this title-page (differently accented) : 

" AEsopz Fable'z in true Orto'graphy with Gram- 
mar-notz. Heryuntoo ar al'so jooined the short 
sentencez of the wyz Cato imprinted with lyk form 
and order: both of which Autorz ar translated out 
of Latin intoo English. By William Bullokar." 

I don't suppose that the Reconstruction Committee 
will find time to consider this matter. But if they 
do think of handling it they should realize that they 
are going to put their hands into a nestful of the 
largest hornets. 



244 



Mr. James Joyce 

MR. JAMES JOYCE is a curious phenom- 
enon. He first appeared in literary- 
Dublin about (I suppose) a dozen years 
ago: a strangely solitary and self-sufficient and 
obviously gifted man. He published a small book 
of verse with one or two good lyrics in it; and those 
who foresaw a future for him became certain they 
were right. He published nothing; but his reputa- 
tion spread even amongst those who had never read 
a line he had written. He disappeared from Ireland 
and went to Austria, where he settled. The war 
came, and soon afterwards his second book — 
Dublincrs — was issued and reviewed with a general 
deference, after wandering about for years among 
publishers who had been fighting shy of it because 
of its undoubted unpleasantness and a reference to 
Edward VII. Another interval and A Portrait of 
the Artist as a Young Man began to run serially in 
the Egoist. " The Egoist, Ltd.," has now pub- 
lished this book, and nobody is surprised to find all 
writing London talking about it. Mr. Joyce has 
only done what was expected. 

Whether this book is supposed to be a novel or 
an autobiography I do not know or care. Presum- 

245 



Books in General 

ably some characters and episodes are fictitious, or 
the author would not even have bothered to employ 
fictitious names. But one is left with the impres- 
sion that almost all the way one has been listening 
to sheer undecorated, unintensified truth. Mr. 
Joyce's title suggests, well enough, his plan. There 
is no " plot." The subsidiary characters appear and 
recede, and not one of them is involved throughout 
in the career of the hero. Stephen Dedalus is born; 
he goes to school; he goes to college. His strug- 
gles are mainly inward: there is nothing unusual in 
that. He has religious crises : heroes of fiction fre- 
quently do. He fights against, succumbs to, and 
again fights against sexual temptation: we have 
stories on those lines in hundreds. All the same, we 
have never had a novel in the least degree resembling 
this one; whether it is mainly success or mainly fail- 
ure, it stands by itself. 

You recognize its individuality in the very first 
paragraph. Mr. Joyce tries to put down the vivid 
and incoherent memories of childhood in a vivid 
and incoherent way: to show one Stephen Dedalus's 
memories precisely as one's own memories might 
appear if one ransacked one's mind. He opens: 

" Once upon a time and a very good time it was 
there was a moocow coming down along the road 
and the moocow that was down along the road met 
a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo . . ." 
246 



Mr. James Joyce 

" His mother had a nicer smell than his father," 
he proceeds. There is verisimilitude in this; but 
a critic on the look-out for Mr. Joyce's idiosyncrasies 
would certainly fasten upon his preoccupation with 
the olfactory — which sometimes leads him to write 
things he might as well have left to be guessed at — 
as one of them. Still, it is a minor characteristic. 
His major characteristics are his intellectual integ- 
rity, his sharp eyes, and his ability to set down pre- 
cisely what he wants to set down. He is a realist 
of the first order. You feel that he means to allow 
no personal prejudice or predilection to distort the 
record of what he sees. His perceptions may be 
naturally limited; but his honesty in registering their 
results is complete. It is even a little too complete. 
There are some things that we are all familiar with 
and that ordinary civilized manners (not phari- 
saism^ prevent us from importing into general con- 
versation. Mr. Joyce can never resist a dunghill. 
He is not, in fact, quite above the pleasure of being 
shocking. Generally speaking, however, he carries 
conviction. He is telling the truth about a type and 
about life as it presents itself to that type. 

He is a genuine realist: that is to say, he puts 
In the exaltations as well as the depressions, the 
inner life as well as the outer. He is not morosely 
determined to paint everything drab. Spiritual pas- 
sions are as powerful to him as physical passions; 
and as far as his own bias goes it may as well be in 

247 



Books in General 

favour of Catholic asceticism as of sensual material- 
ism. For his detachment as author is almost in- 
human. If Stephen is himself, then he is a self who 
is expelled and impartially scrutinized, without pity 
or " allowances," directly Mr. Joyce the artist gets 
to work. And of the other characters one may say 
that they are always given their due, always drawn 
so as to evoke the sympathy they deserve, yet are 
never openly granted the sympathy of the author. 
He is the outsider, the observer, the faithful selector 
of significant traits, moral and physical; his judg- 
ments, if he forms them, are concealed. He never 
even shows by a quiver of the pen that anything dis- 
tresses him. 

His prose instrument is a remarkable one. Few 
contemporary writers are effective in such diverse 
ways; his method varies with the subject-matter and 
never fails him. His dialogue (as in the remark- 
able discussions at home about Barnell and Stephen's 
education) is as close to the dialogue of life as any- 
thing I have ever come across; though he does not 
make the gramophonic mistake of spinning it out as 
it is usually spun out in life and in novels that aim 
at a faithful reproduction of life and only succeed 
in sending one to sleep. And his descriptive and 
narrative passages include at one pole sounding pe- 
riods of classical prose and at the other disjointed 
and almost futuristic sentences. The finest sus- 
tained pages in the book contain the sermon in which 
248 



Mr. James Joyce 

a dear, simple old priest expounds the unimaginable 
horrors of hell: the immeasurable solid stench as of 
a " huge and rolling human fungus," the helpless- 
ness of the damned, " not even able to remove from 
the eye a worm that gnaws it," the fierceness of the 
fire in which " the blood seethes and boils in the 
veins, the brains are boiling in the skull, the heart 
in the breast glowing and bursting, the bowels a 
red-hot mass of burning pulp, the tender eyes flam- 
ing like molten balls." Stephen, after listening to 
this, 

" came down the aisle of the chapel, his legs shaking 
and the scalp of his head trembling as though it had 
been touched by ghostly fingers. He passed up the 
staircase and into the corridor along the walls of 
which the overcoats and waterproofs hung like 
gibbeted malefactors, headless and dripping and 
shapeless." 

No wonder. For myself, I had had an idea that 
this kind of exposition had died with Drexelius; but 
after I had read it I suddenly and involuntarily 
thought, "Good Lord, suppose it is all true!" 
That is a sufficient testimony to the power of Mr. 
Joyce's writing. 

This is not everybody's book. The later portion, 
consisting largely of rather dull student discussions, 
is dull; nobody could be inspired by the story, and 

249 



Books in General 

it had better be neglected by any one who is easily 
disgusted. Its interest is mainly technical, using the 
word in its broadest sense; and its greatest appeal, 
consequently, is made to the practising artist in lit- 
erature. What Mr. Joyce will do with his powers 
in the future it is impossible to conjecture. I con- 
ceive that he does not know himself: that, indeed, 
the discovery of a form is the greatest problem in 
front of him. It is doubtful if he will make a 
novelist. 



250 



Tennessee 

LETTERS from strangers can usually be ac- 
counted for. But why on earth I, more 
than any one else, should have received a 
letter from America asking me to contribute towards 
the re-establishment of a backwoods library I don't 
know. This, however, has been my experience, and 
I trust that I am not endangering the new Anglo- 
Saxon Entente by relieving my feelings in the fol- 
lowing : 

LINES 

Written on receiving from the Librarian of a Col- 
lege which educates " the mountain youth of 
Tennessee " a request for " a hook " to assist 
in the re-formation of the Library, which was 
recently destroyed by fire. 

Mine ears have heard your distant moan, 

O mountain youth of Tennessee; 
Even the bowels of a stone 

PFould melt to your librarian's plea. 
Although we're parted by the ocean, 

I'm most distressed about your fire: 
Only I haven't any notion 

What sort of volume you require. 

251 



Books in General 

/ have a Greene, a Browne, a Gray, 

A Gilbert JVhite, a PFilliam Black, 
Trollope and Lovelace, Swift and Gay, 

And Hunt and Synge: nor do I lack 
More sober folk for whom out there 

There may be rather better scope. 
Three worthy men of reverend air, 

A Donne, a Prior, and a Pope. 

Peacock or Lamb, discreetly taken, 

Might fill the hungry mountain belly. 
Or Hogg or Suckling, Crabbe or Bacon 

{Bacon's not Shakespeare, Crabbe is Shelley) 
And if — for this is on the cards — 

You do not like this mental food, 
I might remit less inward bards: 

My well-worn Spenser or my Hood. 

Longfellows may be in your line 

{Littles we know are second-raters)^ 
Or one might speed across the brine 

A Mayflower full of Pilgrim Paters. 
Or, then again, you may devote 

Yourselves to less esthetic lore, 
Yet if I send you out a Grote* 

For all I know you'll ask for More. 

O thus proceeds my vacillation : 

For now the obvious thought returns 

* Or, with an appearance of greater generosity, one might return 
them the Pound they sent us some years since. 
252 



Tennessee 

That after such a conflagration 
A fitting sequel might be Burns. 

And now again I change my mind 
And, almost confidently, feel 

That since to Beg you are inclined 

You might like Borrow, say, or Steele. . . . 

Envoi 
Yes, Prince, this song shall have an end. 

A sudden thought has come to me — 
The thing is settled: I shall send 

A Tennyson to Tennessee! 

But, as a matter of fact, unless I get a special permit 
for the export of second-hand books, I shan't be 
able to send them even that. 



253 



Sir William Watson and 
Mr. Lloyd George 



R 



''T^ EPRESENTATIVES of literature and 
art " usually appear in the Honours Lists, 
and they are usually queer representatives. 
The knighted litterateur, as a rule, is either a second- 
rate man or a man long past his prime. Possibly 
more men than we know of refuse these knighthoods. 
For myself I do not see what on earth a really dis- 
tinguished artist wants with a knighthood, unless he 
is poor, and thinks that a title would add a guinea 
or two per thousand to the price of his work. If 
Sir Samuel Johnson, Sir Charles Dickens, Sir Will- 
iam Blake, Sir Robert Browning, Sir W. Words- 
worth, Sir S. Taylor Coleridge, Sir George Mere- 
dith stood beside Sir Lewis Morris and Sir W. Rob- 
ertson Nicoll, Sir Henry Dalziel, and Sir Hedley le 
Bas (of the Caxton Publishing Company), I do not 
conceive that those eminent writers would be held in 
greater honour than they are, or that literature 
would cut a more important figure in our social life. 
The one man to whom a knighthood may usefully 
be given is the deserving person who has worked 
conscientiously for years without adequate recogni- 
tion and of whose existence the public might — to 
254 



Sir Wm. Watson and Mr. Lloyd George 

his and its advantage — be officially reminded. As 
the crown of a famous career a knighthood is absurd. 
Sir William Watson has presumably got his 
knighthood for being one of the most industrious 
of the war-poets — and a war-poet congenial to the 
Powers-that-now-Be. Twenty years ago he had a 
greater reputation than he now has, and wrote sev- 
eral good and many respectable poems. He is still 
skilful, and can echo effectively the accents of Words- 
worth and Milton; but he is certainly not a man of 
whom one thinks when one is estimating the vital 
forces in contemporary poetry. A new volume, 
The Man who Saw, has just appeared. The title- 
poem is about the Prime Minister: 

Out of that land where Snowdon night by night 

Receives the confidence of lonesome stars, 

And where Carnarvon's ruthless battlements 

Magnificently oppress the daunted tide, 

There comes — no fabled Merlin, son of mist, 

And brother to the twilight, but a man 

Who in a time terrifically real 

Is real as the time; formed for the time; 

Not much beholden to the munificent Past, 

In mind or spirit, but frankly of this hour; 

No faggot of perfections, angel or saint. 

Created faultless and intolerable; 

No meeting-place of all the heavenlinesses. 

But eminently a man to stir and spur 

Men, to afflict them with benign alarm. 



Books in General 

Harass their sluggish and uneager blood, 

Till, like himself, they are hungry for the goal; 

A man with something of the cragginess 

Of his own mountains, something of the force 

That goads to their loud leap the mountain streams. 

Sir William proceeds to a peroration on 

the man of Celtic blood, 
Whom Powers Unknown, in a divine caprice, 
Chose and did make their instrument, wherewith 
To save the Saxon; the man all eye and hand, 
The man who saw, and grasped, and gripped, and 

held. 
Then shall each morrow with its yesterday 
Vie, in the honour of nobly honouring him. 
Who found us lulled and blindfolded by the verge 
Of fathomless perdition and haled us back. 
And poets shall dawn in pearl and gold of speech. 
Crowning his deed with not less homage, here 
On English ground, than yonder whence he rose. 

This must certainly be the most eulogistic poem ever 
written about a British politician. 

There is nothing about Mr. W. M. Hughes, 
Lord Milner, Lord Curzon, or Lord Devonport 
in the volume; these, perhaps, will be dealt with in 
Sir William's next book, which, I do not doubt, will 
be ready before long. But Sir Edward Carson gets 
256 



Sir Wm. Watson and Mr. Lloyd George 

his meed in a sonnet To the Right Hon. Sir Edward 
Carson, on leaving Antrim, June 30, 19 16, and an- 
other sonnet acclaims Lord Northcliffe — to whom, 
possibly, there is a delicate allusion in the line quoted 
above, beginning " Whom Powers." The sonnet is 
called The Three Alfreds; the three being King 
Alfred, Alfred Lord Tennyson, and Alfred Lord 
Northcliffe : 

Three Alfreds let us honour. Him who drove 
His foes before the tempest of his blade 
At Ethandune — him first, the all-glorious Shade, 
The care-crowned King whose host with Guthrum 

strove. 
Next — though a thousand years asunder clove 
These twain — a lord of realms serenely swayed; 
Victoria's golden warbler, him who made 
Verse such as Virgil for Augustus wove. 
Last — neither king nor bard, but just a man 
Who, in the very whirlwind of our woe. 
From midnight till the laggard dawn began. 
Cried ceaseless, " Give us shells — more shells," and 

so 
Saved England; saved her not less truly than 
Her hero of heroes saved her long ago. 

It is a pity that there could not have been added 
some reference to Lord Northcliffe's conviction that 
nobody in his senses ever dreamed of using shrapnel 
against wire. Had the shells passage been ex- 

257 



Books in General 

panded It might have been less cacophonous. As it 
stands, it gives rise to the suspicious illusion that the 
sibilant cry was uttered by Mr. (or is it Sir?) Wilkie 
Bard. But no; it was " neither King nor Bard." 



258 



Stranded 

N' 



'''T^ TO," I thought, "I won't take any books 
with me. I want a rest. I shall swim. 
I shall catch fish. There is sure to be a 
billiard-room in that pub., and pretty certain to be a 
few people who play bridge. The overtaxed brain 
must be allowed relaxation. So good-bye, Plato; 
good-bye, Spinoza; good-bye, Samuel Rawson Gar- 
diner; good-bye, Freud. I won't take any of you." 

I had been in the place twenty-four hours, and 
had plumbed the depths of my neighbours' incapacity 
to play any games of skill or chance (except pos- 
sibly — I did not ask this — loo and vingt-et-un), 
when, sauntering down the main, and indeed the 
only, street, I caught sight of the words, " Grocer, 
Chemist, Tobacconist, Draper, and Circulating Li- 
brary." It would be ungracious, I felt, to let such 
versatility go unrecognized. Besides, one might as 
well take a novel or two out with one in the boat. 
It might make the intervals between the bites seem 
a little shorter. So in I went. 

A young girl with a pigtail escorted me past the 
Quaker Oats and the Gold Flakes, under a little 

259 



Books in General 

low doorway and into a back room. " A shilling 
deposit, and twopence on each book," she said; and 
left me to the shelves. There were books there all 
right: about two thousand of them, reaching from 
floor to ceiling on both sides. There was no sort 
of order, alphabetical or otherwise, so it was no 
good expecting to find a particular author right off. 
The only thing for it was beginning somewhere and 
going steadily along the rows. 

^. M. Croker: yes, I think I read a great many 
of hers in my youth. They were about penniless 
young ladies going to India and getting married. 
It is no good tackling this one. The Gateless Bar- 
rier, by Lucas Malet; that was about spiritualism, 
and pretty average tosh it was; I shall probably 
come to Sir RicJiard Calmady presently, but I shall 
give him a miss too. The Iron Pirate: I liked that 
rather, but it would be a pity not to like it so much 
now. r feel the same about Saracinesca, The JVitch 
of Prague, and In the Palace of the King, which are 
all in a lump together where some late devotee has 
replaced them. Marion Crawford, upon whose 
every word my childhood hung, I dare not attempt 
you again; even A Cigarette Maker's Romance and 
the chronicle of Mr. Isaacs (who enjoyed Kant and 
deluded me, for a time, into the belief that I should 
Tike him too) will be more dear to the memory if 
they are not restored to sight. Count Hannibal: 
that was the man who either massacred somebody 
260 



Stranded 

or escaped massacre on St. Bartholomew's Day. 
He had a great square jaw and eyes that made you 
jump; and women cowered and obeyed when he 
emitted a short, sharp oath or looked like emitting 
one. Wiliam Black I never liked at any time, so 
nothing by him need detain me. Flames? No. 
Dodof Oh dear, no. Ships that pass in the 
Night? No. There was edelweiss in it, and an 
old man who was otherworldly and read nothing but 
Gibbon. Queen Victoria thought highly of it, but 
I don't want to read it again. Nor Red Pottage 
either. The husband and the other man (I think) 
had a duel. They drew straws, and the man with 
the shortest straw had to kill himself. What the 
lady thought about it I don't remember. But one of 
them was a Lord, New Zealand came in some- 
where, and at suitable places in the conversation a 
moth would flutter or a kingfisher flash by. It is by 
touches like these that one can distinguish really 
imaginative literature, but I am not tempted. 

It is not reasonable to expect a man at this date 
to return to A Yellow Aster, or Moths by Ouida. 
As for The Silence of Dean Maitland, the predica- 
ment of that respected ecclesiastic with the undis- 
closed sin on his conscience is still fresh in my mind, 
and I still remember how my elders, when it first 
came out, debated whether such a book ought to be 
written, and whether Maxwell Gray was a man or 
a woman. Of The Sorrows of Satan I recall little 

261 



Books in General 

of the plot, except that the Devil was a gentleman. 
I think that the first sentences were: " Do you know 
what it is to be poor? Not with that — poverty 
that — on ten thousand a year, but with that grind- 
ing poverty that," etc. How many years ago is it 
since that immortal paragraph, reproduced in fac- 
simile from the author's own script, appeared in the 
Strand Magazine, with pictures of the great novelist 
in divers postures? It would be Ethel M. Dell now, 
I suppose; but they don't seem to keep Miss Dell's 
works in this Circulating Library, of which the cir- 
culation seems to have stopped many, many, many 
years since. They keep instead Frankfort Moore 
and G. B. Burgin. 

Anthony Hope now. Here is The Intrusions of 
Peggy. There was a grizzled inventor who lived 
in the Temple, and he had a daughter ( ?) who shone 
like a sunbeam amidst the dusty shades of the law. 
Anthony Hope, who was very nearly a first-rate 
writer, must have put it better than that; but I'm 
sure that that is what it was about. Seton Merri- 
man now. This is better. But will or will not a 
reperusal of The Vultures and Roden's Corner 
diminish the respect that still survives in me for him? 
He gave me immense pleasure at one time ; can I risk 
it? I don't know. 

With meditations like the above I roamed up 
and down before the frayed and wrinkled backs of 
262 



Stranded 

these veterans, fascinated by so systematic a recovery 
of the famiHar. Then I remembered that the sun 
was shining in a blue sky, only slightly fleeced with 
cloud; that the salt wind blowing shoreward was 
driving broken sunlight over the waves; that there 
were as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it; 
and that I must really take care of my health. 
Catching sight of She and Many Cargoes, which I 
have read at least ten times apiece, but am always 
good for again, I detached them from their faded 
companions and took them into the front shop, 
meditating upon the astonishing sluggishness of this 
shop, where even Mrs. Barclay had not yet pene- 
trated and Garvice was a cloudy speculation in the 
far future. 

I paid my one-and-fourpence and stepped out on 
to the cobblestones. As I passed into the sun, it 
occurred to me that it was not surprising that even 
the minor works in the library were like old friends. 
For — and things like these do strangely remain 
known, yet for a time, unrelated — I spent a sum- 
mer in this village fifteen years ago. 



263 



Mr. Ralph Hodgson 

MR. RALPH HODGSON is a poet who has 
still not quite got his due. He has just 
collected into one volume {Poems) ^ with 
a few others, the verses published in a series of 
*' Flying Fame Booklets " with Mr. Lovat Fraser's 
charming and ingenious cuts. Ten years' work goes 
into seventy pages, so that a charge of over-pro- 
duction is scarcely possible. In the circumstances 
Mr. Hodgson might have included one or two 
poems. The Last Blackbird, for example, from his 
earlier book. That book as a whole, however, was 
not comparable with this, which contains The Bull, 
indubitably one of the finest poems of our generation, 
The Song of Honour, which is almost as good, and 
many charming lighter lyrics. Eve, particularly, is 
a feat. Mr. Hodgson makes a delicate tripping 
song out of the Fall of Man; he pictures Eve, " that 
orchard sprite," 

Pf^ondering, listening, 
Listening, wondering, 
Eve with a berry 
Half-way to her lips, 

and the serpent, a graceful beast, 
264 



Mr. Ralph Hodgson 

Tumbling in twenty rings 
Into the grass. 

The whole story trips like that. 

'' Eva! " Each syllable 
Light as a flower fell, 
" Eva! " he whispered the 
Wondering maid, 
Soft as a bubble sung 
Out of a linnet's lung, 
Soft and most silverly 
" Eva! " he said. 

But — -and this is the achievement — one is not left 
with a sense of inadequacy and triviality. For the 
feeling throughout is sincere, and the nature of the 
calamity is conveyed as clearly by Mr. Hodgson, 
who makes the small birds chatter with sorrow and 
indignation when Eve falls, as it would have been 
by another man with all the paraphernalia of dark- 
ening heavens, thunderous voices, and long Latin 
words. 

But this poem is not on the same plane as The 
^Bull and The Song of Honour. No writer has 
ever entered more completely into the feelings of 
an animal than does Mr. Hodgson as, in a setting 
of tropical forest and swamp, he shows the defeated, 
expelled, and dying leader of the herd remembering 

265 



Books in General 

his calfhood, and his early fights, and his prowess 
and his final fall, whilst the obscene birds circle 
round overhead waiting for his death. The Song 
of Honour, an attempt to echo the Hymn of Praise 
sung by all things to their Maker, is, in the nature 
of things, more disjointed and impressionistic, less 
exact and well-shaped. It owes as much as any 
poem can decently owe to another to Christopher 
Smart's Song to David. But the strength of feeling 
never fails, and parts of the breathless paean are 
very beautiful. 

The music of a lion strong 

That shakes a hill a whole night long, 

Ti hill as loud as he, 

The twitter of a mouse among 

Melodious greenery. 

The ruby's and the rainbow's song, 

The nightingale's — all three, 

The song of life that wells and flows 

From every leopard, lark and rose 

And everything that gleams or goes 

Lack-lustre in the sea. 

I heard it all, I heard the whole 
Harmonious hymn of being roll 
Up through the chapel of my soul 
And at the altar die, 
And in the awful quiet then 
Myself I heard, Amen, Amen, 
266 



Mr. Ralph Hodgson 

Amen I heard me cry! 

I heard it all and then although 

I caught my flying senses, Oh, 

A dizzy man was I ! 

I stood and stared; the sky was lit, 

The sky was stars all over it, 

I stood, I knew not why, 

fVithout a wish, without a will, 

I stood upon that silent hill 

And stared into the sky until 

My eyes were blind with stars and still 

I stared into the sky. 

Those are two of the last stanzas, and even standing 
alone, I think, give something of the quality of the 
poem. They certainly are characteristic in the sim- 
plicity of their language. 



267 



Double Misprints 



I 



TAKE the following paragraph from the Con- 
nersville (Ind.) Herald: 



" The Guest Day meeting of the literary club will 
be held at the home of Mrs. L. A. Frazer to-morrow 
afternoon, Mrs. De Morgan Jones, of Indian- 
apolis, will lecture on " William Butler Meats and 
the Garlic Revival." 

I think the Lady of Shalott should have been 
brought in. Double misprints are rare, but I re- 
member another which also was perpetrated in 
America but which has not quite so convincing an 
air of sheer accident as this one. A Colonel, who 
had fought in the Civil War, was described in his 
local paper as " a battle-scared veteran." This 
Imputation on his courage brought him to the office 
with a T)ig stick and a demand that the paragraph 
should be reprinted with the offensive remark cor- 
rected. It was: but another misprint crept in and 
the word appeared as " bottle-scarred." Every one 
who has dealings with the Press occasionally cor- 
rects, amid the mass of quite meaningless " literals," 
a misprint that really makes some sort of sense. 
268 



Double Misprints 

I myself in the last few months have had to emend 
printers' references to Mr. Hotairio Bottomley and 
Mr. Edmund Goose. The former one felt tempted 
to leave uncorrected, the derangement of letters be- 
ing so extremely apt. 



269 



The History of Earl Fumbles 

THE late Earl (Eorl?) Fumbles was of lowly 
birth. He was born in the thorp of Stoke 
Parva in 1850, the son of a penniless 
timber-wright. Outdriven from his first school, he 
became a fighting-man. He was a dreadless and 
fearnought wight, and was once left for dead on the 
field, bleeding at every sweat-hole. The saw-bones 
brought him through. Coming back to England he 
saw the haplihood of making a gold-hoard in the 
soap-trade. He set up a business with the gold of 
others; got rid of his yoke-mates by sundry under- 
slinkings, and soon became amazingly wealthy. An 
earldom followed; though it is markworthy that on 
the morning after its bestowal a great songsmith 
wrote to the Daily Score to say: 'The Gusher of 
Fair-Name is befouled.' In 19 10 Lord Fumbles 
went as sendling to the King of Siam, with a bode- 
word from our King. In the back-end of the next 
year his health gave out; he became bit-wise worse; 
and he died last night of belly-ache. Lord Fumbles 
was often to be seen at Sir Henry Wood's Out-Road 
Glee-Motes at Queen's Hall, but he was almost a 
comeling at the House of Lords. He was cunning 
in Kin-lore, and in his fair wonestead at Fumbles 
270 



The History of Earl Fumbles 

wrote a great book on the stem-tree of his kin. By 
ill hap he was an eat-all and rather soaksome. He 
will be buried on Wednesday in the bone-yard at 
Fumbles, in which lich-rest his wife already lies. 
The earldom goes, by out-of-the-way odd-come-short, 
to his daughter." 

This little biography may have puzzled those 
who have got thus far. They may have thought 
it absurd. I compiled it with the help of 
" C. L. D.'s " Word-Book of the English Tongue, 
just published by Routledge. " C. L. D." (the 
initials are, I observe, those of the author of Alice 
in Wonderland) IS one of those enthusiasts who long 
" to shake off the Norman yoke " which lies so 
heavy on our speech. He follows, that is to say, 
in the footsteps of the late Rlev. William Barnes 
(oi Dorset), who asked his countrymen to call a 
perambulator a " child-wain " and an omnibus a 
" folk-wain." " What many speakers and writers," 
he remarks, " even to-day, call English, is no English 
at all but sheer French. Nevertheless, there are 
many who feel not a little ashamed of the needless 
loan-words in which their speech is clothed, and of 
the borrowed feathers in which they strut. Over 
and over again it has been said, and most truly, that 
for liveliness and strength, manliness and fulness of 
meaning, the olden English Tongue were hard to 
beat." " In this little Word-Book, therefore," he 
says: 

271 



Books in General 

" after having chosen a few thousand stock loan- 
words, I have striven to set by the side of each, 
not indeed ' synonyms,' but other good English 
words, which may stand in their stead." 

Which is certainly (or, I think I should say, " ywis " 
or " in good sooth ") a pure English sentence. 

One primary fault " C. L. D." avoids almost en- 
tirely. He does not (as he might have done had 
he cared to take all the astonishing Latin words 
from Johnson's Word-Book) load the dice by in- 
cluding in his list of '* loan-words " words which we 
hardly ever use. There are a few. Only a scientist 
would say " acephalous " when he meant " head- 
less " ; and the general public does not need to be 
warned to say " grind," " bristly," " stalkless," and 
" barefooted," instead of " comminute," " aristate," 
" acaulescent," and " discalced." It would never 
dream of saying acaulescent. Where our author 
errs is where he would inevitably err: in suggest- 
ing to us ( I ) Saxon words which we simply 
won't use, and (2) Saxon words which do not take 
the place of the Latin words of which he disap- 
proves. Take, for instance, as an instance of the 
latter category, this very word " disapprove." All 
he can give us is a list of " strong " words beginning 
with " hiss " and " hoot," none of which gets the 
exact shade of meaning required. Similarly with 
272 



The History of Earl Fumbles 

" decry," for which his suggestions are " boo " and 
" hoot." In suggesting " clean," " flat," etc., for 
" absolute " he is merely booing and hooting the 
slang use of that word, but he has not found a 
Saxon equivalent for the real " absolute." For 
"complimentary" he gives "smooth-spoken"; but 
how would, say, the Archbishop of Canterbury like 
to get a letter of thanks beginning: " My dear 
Archbishop, — Many thanks for your very smooth- 
spoken remarks"? For "uncomfortable" he can 
only suggest writhing " — as though we could say 
that we had spent a fortnight in a most writhing 
hotel; and for " temporalities" he has nothing but 
"loaves and fishes" — which is simply offensive. 
If one began using words like these promiscuously, 
one would simply (here I consult the JVord'Book 
again) be asking for misluck. 

To turn to the other lot, it is altogether too late 
to ask us to say " rede-craft " for " logic "; " back- 
jaw " for " retort "; " handmaid " for " servant "; 
" outganger " for "emigrant"; " wanhope " (a 
most beautiful word, I admit) for "despair"; 
"scald" or "songsmith" for "poet"; " hight " 
or "yclept" for "denominated"; " uplooking " 
for "aspiring"; " fourwinkled " for "quadrangu- 
lar"; and, above all, to replace "depilatory" by 
"hair-bane." " Ereold " and " foreold " for 
" ancient " are no longer possible; and the man who 

273 



Books in General 

should say that the King was crowned and be- 
smeared in Westminster Abbey would be quite un- 
able to persuade people that he wasn't merely a 
rather coarse satirist. In cases where both terms 
are alive, the Latin is often more convenient — be- 
cause shorter — than the Saxon. If we always used 
" breach of wedlock " instead of " adultery," many 
modern novels, and most Sunday newspapers, would 
use up twice as much paper and ink. (There was 
once a half-way word: the mediaeval heralds used 
to say that the leopard was " begotten in spouse- 
breach between the lion and the pard.") In pro- 
posing " hand-grip " for portmanteau, our word- 
loresman is doing an audacious thing: adopting a bit 
of modern American — though, as often as not, the 
term Is shortened, across the water, to " grip " tout 
court. 

There remain, of course, a very large number of 
words for which " C. L. D." does provide genuine 
living synonyms which. In many cases, are stronger 
and terser than the originals. Even here, of course, 
there are occasional difficulties; we have, at any rate 
in print, thrown over " C. L. D.'s " favourites 
" belly-ache " and " gripes " in favour of " colic " 
simply because they are what Is called " good sturdy 
Saxon," altogether too apt and sturdy. As for his 
proposal of " ropes " and " manifolds " for " Intes- 
tines," all I can say is that I much prefer here to 
remain under the Norman yoke. At the same time, 
too much Latlnlty is a nuisance and a danger to the 
274 



The History of Earl Fumbles 

vividness of our tongue; and, whilst refraining from 
following " C. L. D." to his thorps or Barnes to his 
folk-wain, I think I shall sometimes find the JVord- 
Book useful. 



275 



On Destroying Books 



I 



*'^ T says in the paper " that over two million vol- 
umes have been presented to the troops by the 
public. It would be interesting to inspect 
them. Most of them, no doubt, are quite ordinary 
and suitable ; but it was publicly stated the other day 
that some people were sending the oddest things, 
such as magazines twenty years old, guides to the 
Lake District, Bradshaws, and back numbers of 
PFhitaker's Almanack. In some cases, one imagines, 
such indigestibles get into the parcels by accident; 
but it is likely that there are those who jump at the 
opportunity of getting rid of books they don't want. 
Why have kept them if they don't want them? But 
most people, especially non-bookish people, are very 
reluctant to throw away anything that looks like a 
book. In the most illiterate houses that one knows 
every worthless or ephemeral volume that is bought 
finds its way to a shelf and stays there. In reality 
it is not merely absurd to keep rubbish merely be- 
cause it is printed: it is positively a public duty to 
destroy it. Destruction not merely makes more 
room for new books and saves one's heirs the trouble 
of sorting out the rubbish or storing it: it may also 
prevent posterity from making a fool of itself. We 
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On Destroying Books 

may be sure that if we do not burn, sink, or blast all 
the superseded editions of Bradshaw, two hundred 
years hence some collector will be specializing in old 
railway time-tables, gathering, at immense cost, a 
complete series, and ultimately leaving his " treas- 
ures " (as the Press will call them) to a Public Insti- 
tution. 

But it is not always easy to destroy books. They 
may not have as many lives as a cat, but they cer- 
tainly die hard; and it is sometimes difficult to find 
a scaffold for them. This difficulty once brought 
me almost within the Shadow of the Rope. I was 
living in a small and (as Shakespeare would say) 
heaven-kissing flat in Chelsea, and books of inferior 
minor verse gradually accumulated there until at last 
I was faced with the alternative of either evicting 
the books or else leaving them in sole, undisturbed 
tenancy and taking rooms elsewhere for myself. 
Now, no one would have bought these books. I 
therefore had to throw them away or wipe them 
off the map altogether. But how? There were 
scores of them. I had no kitchen range, and I could 
not toast them on the gas-cooker or consume them 
leaf by leaf in my small study fire — for it is almost 
as hopeless to try to burn a book without opening it 
as to try to burn a piece of granite. I had no dust- 
bin; my debris went down a kind of flue behind the 
staircase, with small trap-doors opening to the land- 
ings. The difficulty with this was that the larger 

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Books in General 

books might choke it; the authorities, in fact, had 
labelled it " Dust and Ashes Only " ; and in any 
case I did not want to leave the books intact, and 
some dustman's unfortunate family to get a false 
idea of English poetry from them. So in the end 
I determined to do to them what so many people 
do to the kittens : tie them up and consign them to 
the river. I improvised a sack, stuffed the books 
into it, put it over my shoulder, and went down 
the stairs into the darkness. 

It was nearly midnight as I stepped into the street. 
There was a cold nip in the air; the sky was full of 
stars; and the greenish-yellow lamps threw long 
gleams across the smooth, hard road. Few people 
were about; under the trees at the corner a Guards- 
man was bidding a robust good night to his girl, 
and here and there rang out the steps of solitary 
travellers making their way home across the bridge 
to Battersea. I turned up my overcoat collar, 
settled my sack comfortably across my shoulders, 
and strode off towards the little square glow of the 
coffee-stall which marked the near end of the bridge, 
whose sweeping iron girders were just visible against 
the dark sky behind. A few doors down I passed 
a policeman who was flashing his lantern on the 
catches of basement windows. He turned. I 
fancied he looked suspicious, and I trembled slightly. 
The thought occurred to me: " Perhaps he suspects 
278 



On Destroying Books 

I have swag in this sack." I was not seriously dis- 
turbed, as I knew that I could bear investigation, 
and that nobody would be suspected of having stolen 
such goods (though they were all first editions) as 
I was carrying. Nevertheless I could not help the 
slight unease which comes to all who are eyed sus- 
piciously by the police, and to all who are detected 
in any deliberately furtive act, however harmless. 
He acquitted me, apparently; and, with a step that, 
making an effort, I prevented from growing more 
rapid, I walked on until I reached the Embankment. 
It was then that all the implications of my act 
revealed themselves. I leaned against the parapet 
and looked down into the faintly luminous swirls of 
the river. Suddenly I heard a step near me; quite 
automatically I sprang back from the wall and began 
walking on with, I fervently hoped, an air of rumina- 
tion and unconcern. The pedestrian came by me 
without looking at me. It was a tramp, who had 
other things to think about; and, calling myself an 
ass, I stopped again. " Now's for it," I thought; 
but just as I was preparing to cast my books upon 
the waters I heard another step — a slow and meas- 
ured one. The next thought came like a blaze of 
terrible blue lightning across my brain : " What about 
the splash? " A man leaning at midnight over the 
Embankment wall: a sudden fling of his arms: a 
great splash in the water. Surely, and not without 
reason, whoever was within sight and hearing (and 

279 



Books in General 

there always seemed to be some one near) would 
at once rush at me and seize me. In all probability 
they would think it was a baby. What on earth 
would be the good of telling a London constable 
that I had come out into the cold and stolen down 
alone to the river to get rid of a pack of poetry? 
I could almost hear his gruff, sneering laugh: " You 
tell that to the Marines, my son! " 

So for I do not know how long I strayed up and 
down, increasingly fearful of being watched, sum- 
moning up my courage to take the plunge and quail- 
ing from it at the last moment. At last I did it. In 
the middle of Chelsea Bridge there are projecting 
circular bays with seats in them. In an agony of 
decision I left the Embankment and hastened 
straight for the first of these. When I reached it 
I knelt on the seat. Looking over, I hesitated again. 
But I had reached the turning-point. " Whatl " I , 
thought savagely, " under the resolute mask that you 
show your friends is there really a shrinking and 
contemptible coward? If you fail now, you must 
never holH your head up again. Anyhow, what if 
you are hanged for it ? Good God ! you worm, bet- 
ter men than you have gone to the gallows ! " With 
the courage of despair I took a heave. The sack 
dropped sheer. A vast splash. Then silence fell 
again. No one came. I turned home; and as I 
walked I thought a little sadly of all those books 
falling into that cold torrent, settling slowly down 
280 



On Destroying Books 

through the pitchy dark, and subsiding at last on the 
ooze of the bottom, there to he forlorn and forgot- 
ten whilst the unconscious world of men went on. 

Horrible bad books, poor innocent books, you are 
lying there still; covered, perhaps, with mud by this 
time, with only a stray rag of your sacking sticking 
out of the slime into the opaque brown tides. Odes 
to Diana, Sonnets to Ethel, Dramas on the Love of 
Lancelot, Stanzas on a First Glimpse of Venice, you 
lie there in a living death, and your fate is perhaps 
worse than you deserved. I was harsh with you. 
I am sorry I did it. But even if I had kept you, I 
will certainly say this: I should not have sent you 
to the soldiers. 



THE END 



281 



M'[ljl'l||!|;|!i 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



